Birthday party hearty!

This post celebrates Allie's birthday. For her dinner party, she chose a place berthed on Auckland's Wynyard Quarter wharf.   

This is not the sort of wharf where mysterious freighters dock at midnight, where private eyes and spies hang out, or where fog swirls and foghorns sound. (at least not usually) 

No, this is a bright, revitalized, energetic section of the city that pulls in a steady stream of the hungry and thirsty. 

As you'll see in my first picture, we ate at a place called Miss Clawdy.  I've copied a bit of text from their website, explaining who they are...

"YOU FOUND US, COME ON IN

Miss Clawdy is your soul food haven. Inspired by Lloyd Price’s 1952 New Orleans hit single, ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’, we feed hungry hearts with edible goodness wrapped in a lil’ southern magic.

Be warned, Miss Clawdy’s kitchen ain’t shy when it comes to cooking. Flavours are big, playful and have attitude, just like Miss Clawdy herself.

Miss Clawdy praises the soul, heart and essence of sharing derived from southern cuisine.

We appreciate you stopping by, see y’all soon."

To get you in the proper mood, I've included Lloyd's song just below. My suggestion is to get it going and then click back to my post to look at the pictures while he sings. 

(they had music playing inside and we got to hear this song several times while we ate.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apyP260BYBg

 We're at the back

 Allie's friend Dory has joined us tonight. 

 It's winter here. It's only about 7:00 p.m. but it's full dark and rather chilly as we walk back to our car. We are warm though. We had a couple orders of fried chicken, jambalaya, shrimp and grits, mac and cheese, Jamaican jerked chicken, kumera, corn bread, cabbage slaw, and french fries. Did a lot of tasting of each other's choices. Some of us even tried a Lawdy lager. (I had two)  

The massive fish market building you see once glistened (no doubt) with fish scales as fishermen unloaded their daily catches into it. Now it twinkles with lights and houses an assortment of trendy eateries inside where visitors and locals sip wine or craft beers as they dine,     

and where art adorns practically every wall.  

You can still buy fish there from any number of vendors, and right from live tanks if you want, or take cooking classes upstairs featuring the freshest of fish.  

 In the car park.

When we got home, we had birthday cake. 
Allie's favorite cake is this one. It's a two-layer super-moist yellow cake with caramel frosting, caramel corn and flaked sea salt on top.  All homemade. (except the sea salt) 
And, as usual, Jeanne accidentally made a whole lot more caramel corn than was needed to top the cake. Oh well, we'll all help get rid of it, somehow...

Happy Birthday to Allie!    -djf

Bonus Feature...

I liked that song so much, I wanted to hear it again. Here are Lloyd Price And Little Richard doing it in 1994.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esbL7CjTavo

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Whoa, that was a close one...

It's a good thing that we got out and celebrated Allie's birthday like we did. On Aug. 12th, additional cases of Covid-19 were identified and NZ is shut down once again at level 3. 

No travel, no restaurants, no crowds, no work or schools. Lots of masks and social distancing again.