Dish finder in Auckland

The national pie: beef mince and gravy under melted cheese in flaky pastry, from any bakery or service station.

Seasoned sausage meat in puff pastry, with tomato sauce. The bakery cabinet's other staple.

Battered tarakihi, snapper or gurnard and chips, wrapped in paper and eaten at the beach. Ask what the fish of the day is.

Tiny translucent fish bound in egg and fried, served in a slice of white bread with lemon. Seasonal and expensive.

Big native mussels, steamed with white wine and garlic or grilled on the half-shell. Cheap and excellent.

Rich, deep-water oysters from the far south, flown up in season, roughly March to August. Eat them raw with lemon.

Fish cured in citrus with coconut cream, onion and tomato. Auckland has the world's largest Pacific population; try it at the Ōtara market.

Meat, kūmara, pumpkin and stuffing cooked for hours in an earth oven over hot stones. Usually made for occasions or sold as fundraisers.

Leg of lamb roasted with rosemary and served with roast vegetables and mint sauce. The Sunday dinner.

Pork bones simmered with watercress or pūhā, potatoes, kūmara and doughboys. Māori home cooking.

Northern Chinese dumplings by the dozen, boiled or pan-fried, from the row of restaurants along Dominion Road.

Chips of the local sweet potato, crisp outside and soft inside, with aioli. A side on most café and pub menus.

Taro leaves baked around coconut cream and onion, a Samoan Sunday dish. Some versions add corned beef, so ask.

Meringue with a crisp shell and marshmallow centre, topped with cream, kiwifruit and berries. Claimed fiercely from Australia.

Vanilla ice cream with lumps of crunchy honeycomb toffee. Order a double scoop at a dairy.

A crumbly chocolate and cornflake biscuit with chocolate icing and a walnut on top. In every café cabinet.