If there was one band I trust to rehash a kiwi anthem as Iconic as Dominion Road by the Mutton Birds, it’s DARTZ. The band have combined forces with Sports Team to put together a hot video for their new single ‘Dominion road (Dumpling House)’, and it is a very tasty take indeed.

The video follows the boys (joined by some other Tamaki Cuties) on a culinary journey, hitting the plethora of hotspots along Dominion road. It contains a few of my favourite things, Dumplings, Slow-motion eating shots, Rollyz, and of course the infamous Gogo’s Music Café.

Gogo’s is arguably the best place to eat in Auckland. There, I said it and I stand by it. Meat on sticks? A whole fish? Kitch Décor from its western-themed predecessor ‘Cask and Cleaver’ which has been untouched since the mid 90’s and gets increasingly more confusing and problematic as time goes on? It’s got it all. There’s even a very small and inexplicably high stage which teases the prospect of Karaoke, which adds a thrilling ‘will they won’t they’ element to your dining experience. Few have actually witnessed this, but it is really something. Once, I was mid crispy chicken skin skewer when an adorable young girl took her spot on that incredibly high stage, and started singing into a crackly microphone. It was beautiful, and it really added to my cumin spice high. What is this cumin spice high you ask? Well, it is exactly what it sounds like. Picture this: the place is jam packed, you're on your 27th skewer, you’ve had more than enough beer so you’ve moved onto a pineapple jelly soda, you’re sweating, the food is hot, the smoking step is already full and the stairs are far too steep to risk heading down to the car park, and things start to get a bit weird. The room gets louder, and the skewers keep coming at a rapid pace. It’s a lot. If I was to write a song about Gogo’s it would go a little something like “Cumin, cumin everywhere, on my clothes and in my hair”. It’s a work in progress. Damn, I bloody love that place.

I digress.

Dartz even sit down to a dumpling or 12 at New Flavour restaurant (or is it Barilla? Or perhaps Spicy house?) with the Don himself. The band took McGlashan and his manager out for dinner, and according to all sources he does, in fact, approve of their remake.

One moment of the video that I find particularly poignant is when the friends dine alfresco beneath the significantly sized stompers of (white) Boy Walking, Artist Ronnie Van Hout’s 5.6m hyper-realistic sculpture in Potters Park. As The Boy confidently treads on what I can only assume is a succulent Chinese meal, I can’t help but wonder how much Dominion road might have changed since the songs original release 1992. This moment to me, is as juicy as the contents of those polystyrene containers. It lends itself to a much greater discussion about the gentrification of these iconic Tāmaki Makaurau areas that I can merely scratch the surface of in this already-well-over-suggested-word-count response, so I will just leave you with that. Food for thought, heh.

Good shit boys, Love ya work.

Review by Lucy Suttor

DARTZ — Dominion Road (Dumpling House)