Yi Pin Xiang 一品香 — Restaurant in Howick

Would not recommend and would not return again. The person who took our order was rather uncooperative. After having ordered sweet sour pork, hot and sour egg plant in clay pot, lamb with ginger and onion on sizzling plate, beef with black pepper sauce on sizzling plate and asking if they can start with these and we'd order more later, the person ordering had said three times "we'll just order these first" and the guy taking the orders replied with "it's better if you order everything". A second member saw this and literally had to parrot we'll just order these first. We added steamed seasonal whole fish with ginger and hot and spicy tofu with pork mince after. The sweet sour pork was good as was the lamb, I'd recommend both dishes. The beef wasn't as tender as what we'd have in other restaurants on a sizzling plate. The tofu and egg plant dishes were bad, it's actually two of my favorite dishes and I didn't touch it after a first taste. The only thing the tofu had was spice, and the egg plant had no fragrance at all. (Direct translation of the Chinese is fragrant fish eggplant). The good thing was they offered free refill with the rice. The bad thing was the rice was too hard and was not fragrant rice. It was probably one of the worst plain white rice I've had in restaurants for a very long time. Usually you'd get very good white rice in restaurants, which will enhance the flavour of their dishes. This is not one of those. I took a bite and thought this is horrible, it's too hard and it is the worst rice I've had in years. Btw they don't offer free soup or dessert unlike many others in Meadowlands. Would not recommend...

The restaurant is usually quite busy but we were here on a Monday so it wasn't packed. There were quite a few interesting items on the menu so it would have been better to come as a larger group to try them all. We shared the items and they were nice. The pork with sweet sauce came with bao to wrap it in. There was a decent portion of meat with that dish. The fat fried noodles with pork rib was essentailly a Shanghai Fried noodle with pieces of deep fried pork and it was quite nice. The chicken with tofu sauce was interesting. It tasted like the red fermented beancurd and the chicken was fried quite nicely so it was crispy. Definately a nice place for good...

Again I have to say that You must go East to the Chinese neighborhood to eat authentic and fabulous Chinese foods!

This is my first time here with our elderly parents-like "friends". They told me this one has been operating for more than 20 years.

Hong Kong background owner who married a Shanghai lady so they actually make a wonderful balance on the menu.

What a tasty meal we had at lunch today!

Way better than any Shanghai restaurants in all Auckland although it's an absolutely old fashioned one.

You won't regret to drive all the way to the East. They are just so beautifully...