On Symonds Street in Royal Oak, JJ Kitchen — also trading as JJ Bubble Tea — answers three cravings at once. It is a Chinese takeaway kitchen, a fish and chip counter and a bubble tea bar sharing one shopfront, which makes it the rare place where a single order can span beef black bean sauce on rice, a scoop of chips with a piece of Hoki, and a taro milk tea for the road. Everything is cooked to order for pickup, and the whole menu can be browsed and pre-ordered online.
The kitchen's own top-sellers list leans dependable and familiar: chicken fried rice, combination fried rice, crispy wontons, plain chips, and the sweet and sour, lemon and honey chicken and pork plates that generations of takeaway customers order without opening the menu.
The Chinese side of the menu runs deep. Stir-fries span chicken, beef, seafood and roast meats, with spicy Sichuan versions, black bean and black pepper sauces, and ginger-and-spring-onion wok dishes. Hot pots include slow-simmered beef brisket, seafood tofu, and roast pork with tofu. The roast-meat selection does BBQ pork and roast pork by the half kilo and full kilo, plus half a roast duck — served on the bone, as the menu fairly warns.
Rice and noodle eaters are well catered for: around fifteen fried rices, from egg fried rice to Yangzhou, nasi goreng and chicken salt fish; soft fried noodles, crispy-noodle chow mein, vermicelli and wide rice noodles; egg foo yung; and more than thirty plates served on rice, from lemon chicken to beef brisket. Soups run from chicken sweet corn and wonton noodle soup to beef brisket and roast duck versions. There is a proper vegetarian list too — mapo tofu, garlic bok choy and broccoli, and deep-fried tofu with sweet chilli or spicy salt.
Dumplings are a quiet strength: pork, prawn and chive dumplings by the dozen, chicken and vegetable dumplings, and chicken nibbles in six, twelve or twenty-piece lots. The Happy Bowl is the house's build-your-own idea — a fried noodle or fried rice base, crispy chicken or BBQ pork, then sweet and sour, honey or black pepper sauce on top.
The fish and chip counter is full Kiwi: Hoki fillets, crumbed fish, chips and kumara chips, potato and pineapple fritters, hot dogs, sausages, crab sticks, scallops, squid rings, spring rolls, chicken nuggets, doughnuts and even a deep-fried bun with condensed milk. Six set combos scale from a simple two-fish-and-chips up to a forty-piece chicken nibble spread, while five JJ Family Packs pair dumplings and fried rice with the likes of sweet and sour pork, beef brisket hot pot and cashew chicken for a full table. Burgers — including the JJ Special, stacked with ham, egg, chicken, cheese and pineapple — fill the gaps in between.
The drinks list is where the JJ Bubble Tea name earns itself. Seven-hundred-millilitre cups dominate: milk teas from original and pearl through taro, matcha, Oreo and brown sugar; jasmine-based green teas with coconut jelly; sparkling fruit sodas with mixed jelly; yogurt drinks topped with popping balls; and smoothies made with real mango and mixed berry. Bubble tea runs on loyalty here — buy ten and the eleventh is free, with a stamp card that racks up rewards for regulars.
Practically speaking, JJ Kitchen opens at 11am Tuesday through Sunday and from 4pm on Mondays. Orders are pickup only and can be pre-booked online, paid securely by Visa, Mastercard or PayPal. The menu flags gluten-free, vegetarian, sugar-free and dairy-free items, and food spends of $50 or more earn a free Lime Jasmine Tea — two at $100 — a tidy bonus on an order big enough to sample the whole three-in-one act.