Tiny eatery tucked into a supermarket serves 70 Chinese dishes daily

Tuesday, 23 June 2026

The corner is low-key and easy to miss, with no big signs and no obvious “food court” branding inside Basics Asian Supermarket at Church Corner.

From breakfast buns to braised meats, a tiny kitchen tucked inside a Christchurch grocer is offering up to 70 fresh dishes a day.

There’s no big sign, or obvious “food court” branding. Most people walking through the area would miss it.

But for those who know, Local’s Kitchen feels like a small slice of a Chinese morning market.

“It’s like you suddenly go back to a food street in China,” Basics Asian Supermarket manager May Cao said. “People come, eat, buy, and go — very convenient.”

Grocery shoppers don’t need to go anywhere else. Cao said the eatery within her supermarket can cover the whole day — breakfast, lunch and dinner.

“Freshly made buns and savoury pancakes for breakfast, with hot soy milk… At lunchtime it’s boxed rice meals. In the evening it’s stir-fries, braised meats, and small snacks to go with drinks.”

The tightly-packed corner is no more than a couple of square metres, yet serves 60 to 70 different dishes, cooked fresh daily.

Local’s Kitchen can sell more than 100 boxed meals and hot dishes on a busy weekend day.

“It’s all made by our chefs. We’ve got four chefs in total, and they start early, around 7.15am every day.”

She said the operation is split across different kitchens tucked behind and around the store — one dedicated to stir-fries next to a nearby fish shop, another for smoked and braised meats beside a butchery, and a separate station behind the counter for buns and savoury pancakes.

The fit-out is just plain white walls, covered with menus, signs and handwritten labels. Some are printed, some are scribbled, and some lean into creative English.

Fried pork belly is a popular snack to accompany Chinese spirits, or to be eaten with chilli sauce. Fried chicken cartilage is also popular, prized for its chewy texture.

“Secret braised flavours.”

“Braised meat academy.”

Dishes appear in a mix of Chinese and inventive English translations. Sweet and sour pork ribs are listed as “Swear sour pork rib”. Fried chicken cartilage becomes “fried chicken soft bone”.

Sweet and sour flavours are a big hit with Kiwi customers.

Other items — pork intestines, pork ears and braised cuts — often skip English altogether, relying instead on the food itself, or curiosity.

Cao said they started small almost three years ago — first with smoked and braised meats, then breakfast buns and pastries, and later stir-fries and boxed meals as demand grew.

“We want to make it a one-stop shop for Chinese food. So we just kept adding.”

Various cold dishes are available to take away.

Crispy, savoury and lightly glazed with a rich soy-based sauce, jiangxiang bing (sauce-flavoured pancake) is a popular street-style flatbread often enjoyed as a quick snack or takeaway bite.

The menu includes, from left, fried peanuts, Shanghai-style smoked fish, steamed buns and rolls, tofu pudding and pan-fried dumplings — a classic Chinese breakfast spread.

Flatbreads and pastries start from $4.5 each.

The pricing is affordable. Boxed rice meals are priced at $9.90 for one dish over rice, or $14.90 for two dishes with rice, chosen from a rotating selection of options featuring different meats, fish, tofu and vegetables.

Some of the cheapest items are the flatbreads — about $4.50 each, roughly the size of at least three palms, or about $8 for two — with flavours including beef and pork mince pies, chive and egg pancakes, and egg and ham flatbreads. They are popular as quick snacks, light lunches and after-school bites.

“The egg and ham flatbreads and the chive pancakes are favourites with non-Chinese customers. A lot of students come after school for them,” Cao said.

Basics Asian Supermarket is at 8 Brake St, Upper Riccarton, Christchurch, with Local’s Kitchen tucked just inside the entrance on the left-hand corner, beside the One-man noodle house.