Over the years, Sandringham has earned the nickname ‘Little India’ owing to the range of Indian supermarkets, restaurants and takeaways located in the area. Every year, Sandringham hosts a food festival that brings hundreds of food lovers from across Auckland to taste the delicacies of India.
The Sandringham Food Festival for 2015 was held on Saturday, 31 October. This year, the festival was held for eight hours from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and yet it seemed too short for the food lovers that occupied the streets even after sunset.
The festival slowed the vehicle traffic in the area, and the streets were occupied with the mobile coffee trucks, art and craft stalls, music bands on the gardens and food stalls.
Sandringham Food and Spice Tour is one of the most significant activity happening in the area where a group of random individuals taste the food of every restaurant, every second Saturday of the month. This gives restaurants a range of new customers every fortnight plus a subtle promotion through the word of mouth.
The most important part of the festival was the biryani competition, secretly judged by experts over a period of time. Bawarchi Restaurant and Takeaways was awarded ‘The Best Chicken Biryani in Town’ while Shubh Restaurant and Takeaways won the award for ‘The Best Vegetarian Biryani in Town’ for this year.
“Our efforts have been recognised, and all the credit goes to our chefs Mohammad Jamal, Abdul Dayan and team for giving the best meat biryani to our customers,” said Mohammad Azeem, owner of Bawarchi Restaurant and Takeaways.
Apart from Indian food stalls, visitors were treated to Samoan, Turkish, Arabic, Mexican and Sri Lankan cuisine. The festival attracted not only Indian but Kiwis and other communities as well.
Restaurants in Sandringham are well known among Aucklanders for serving the best and the most authentic Indian dishes in town.
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