A review of the big doughnuts people queue and queue for at the Auckland Night Markets.

Piako Street in Ōtara is busy on a Tuesday at 1pm. Flat Bush Primary School students are on their lunch break and across the road at the shops, all the parking is taken. There, sandwiched between a laundromat and a superette, is Tanz KTCHN, the beloved Cook Island takeaways which travels to Auckland’s roving night markets most evenings. There’s a Metro magazine top 50 bubble on the window from 2020, and inside, hand painted wooden signs saying “Kia Orana”, “Island Time” and “Haere Mai”. 

Here, hot Cook Island doughnuts, as big as a scary Australian spider, are sold by the bag. In each steamy brown paper package comes a dozen doughnuts for $12. There are also meals; steak with mushroom sauce on rice, pork belly, chop suey and pink potato salad, but it seems no one leaves without an almost translucently oiled paper bag bursting at the seams with fresh doughnuts. 

At the night markets, the Tanz KTCHN stall is a hive of organised chaos. There’s infamously long lines leading to it and a flurry within. Today, in the daytime, people wait outside the shop with their numbered receipts, or in their car. There’s a breeze. It’s peaceful. The two workers don’t play any music, instead letting the playground sounds from the school drift in. I order two bags of doughnuts, which “won’t take long”. When I fail four times to put the correct pin code for The Spinoff petty cash Eftpos card, it’s “all good”. 

While I wait I linger outside. Across the road a family gets started on whatever’s in their little boxes before they head out. A neighbourhood dog comes and has a sniff around them before wandering back up a driveway, towards a 50s ex-state house, which is replicated up the road on both sides. Tongan flags flap from the fence of the school and a student reaches his arm through the fence bars. 

I have not had a Cook Island doughnut before. I’m more familiar with Argentinian facutras, sticky, sweet, flaky pastries often filled with dulce de leche and sold by the dozen in bakeries. I love them but most people who I’ve shared dulce de leche with have found it shockingly sweet and never asked for more. This is fine because I don’t really want to share it.

“Sixty-seven!” My order is ready. Two brown paper bags, already soaked through, inside a flimsy plastic bag which we will not inspect the legalities of. I should drive back asap so the doughnuts are still warm when I get back to the office, but I think it must be part of the doughnut experience to quickly gobble one in the car before you set off. Surely. 

Fished out from its peers, my doughnut is soft and hot. Sweetness is present only in whisps, and it’s kind of like… bread? I had been expecting a sweet treat along the lines of a factura, but instead I realise this is comfort food, like gnocchi, which I order every time it’s on a menu, even if I am disappointed each time it’s not quite like my grandma’s. I like the doughnut. Hot fresh bread-esque things are really good, actually. 

On the motorway back to the office I curse that we’re so far away. My lips seem to remember the warmth of the doughnut for about 20 teasing minutes. When I peel my eyes away from the road to check on my passengers of the highest order, I get hungrier and hungrier. I park around the corner from the office so I can eat my second donut in private. It feels therapeutic, a whole new level to car sitting. I am grounded, centred, anxiety quietened. No one’s going to count 22 donuts and complain there should be 24, I decide. It’s a blessing they aren’t sickly sweet because it means you can eat more of them and your dentist won’t be too mad at you. 

The remaining doughnuts are still warm when they are plucked up by hands taking unlikely breaks from clanky keyboards. “These throw me back to all my family barbecues,” says one anon senior designer. “I’ve had more Cook Island doughnuts than I care to admit,” says the mouth of an editor before ripping in. “Yum,” says someone else. The paper bags are all ripped up, and beads of condensation line the inside of the plastic one. No one’s commented on the quantity of doughnuts, so I pick another one up, tear it, and put it in my mouth.