Aug 23, 2025 4 min read

the great noodle run

described as the amazing race meets food crawl, the great noodle run was one of the auckland restaurant month events and consisted of a fun afternoon visiting four city centre noodle restaurants.

love how clear the water is where we live • if we weren't heading to the city, i'd be going for a swim!

heading into the city for the great noodle run

we'd been invited to join a couple of our fancy friends on this adventure and i'd been looking forward to it for months. our amazing race (with absolutely zero running) started at the giant steps at freyberg place, where we were each handed a lanyard with a great noodle run card attached and given a qr code to scan. that brought up our first riddle.

the noodle run card which we'd show at each restaurant to claim our noodles and get our next clue

and we didn't know which restaurant we were going to next until we scanned the qr code at each place and solved the next riddle. it was a super fun way to explore the city centre on foot, one bowl of noodles at a time.

nic tucks into his first bowl of noodles on the great noodle run

first up was warming rice noodle on lorne street. it is a tiny place and was packed full of people waiting to claim their first bowl of noodles. after taking ours outside and slurping them down in the sunshine, we pondered our second clue.

that led us to another spot down high street called bannsang - a korean place where we collected our second delicious bowl of noodles. it was close to where we started, so we took our bowls back to freyberg place and sat in the sun on the steps.

two bowls in and we're all starting to feel full so we take a bit of a break, basking in the sunshine until we all felt warm—and curious—enough to keep going.

noodle from bannsang, enjoyed in the sun

i am currently 75% noodles. 20% other noodles. 5% cocktail
nic (at the end of our adventure)

the third clue didn't lead us to noodles but to a coin operated karaoke joint called coin singing booth. jamming ourselves into a booth, we followed the instructions to "grab the remote and press popular chart button, select pop, then choose a song and sing it loud and proud".

so we selected.
and we sang.

it was truly, truly awful.
but what we lacked in talent, we made up for it with enthusiasm.

worth the wait • the amazing noodles from kajiken

so, so good • we emptied nic's bowl into mine and brought home what we were too full to eat

clue number four had us wandering down o'connell street to a japanese ramen place called kajiken. this place was also packed with other noodle runners, so there was a bit of a wait for our food. (i was quietly glad of that as it gave us a chance to digest the previous two bowls a bit more before tucking into the third.)

and this one was our firm favourite, all of us vowing to return for more (just not today!)

aroy thai • the final stop of our noodle run moving feast

the last clue took us down to commerce street where our final dish was a (mercifully small) bowl of pad thai noodles from aroy thai.

all of us were totally stuffed by the end but we all managed to find room to squeeze in a cocktail at panacea before heading home (carrying all the noodles we couldn't eat along the way). such a fun way to spend an afternoon and a great way to discover some delicious new eats in the heart of the city.