Conch Kitchen & Bar

Love the Arepas. Always a good selection of beer on tap, great staff especially Nach. Good vibes overall.

Conch. Nowadays more a restaurant/​bar/​café than the record store/​café it used be but nevertheless an excellent joint with great staff, service and excellent food. Always good vibes at Conch, great ambience, and people with appreciation for non-​commercial music will enjoy the tunes they play. Décor is fantastic and original — All the walls you see, the furniture, every thing is handmade, realised through one man’s vision.
The coffee is excellent, there’s also a good selection of alcoholic bevs. Food is outstanding. The tacos and arepas are delicious, quality.

Dropped on a Monday night. We had Arepas and Tacos. All very good. The daughter thought the fish taco was excellent I thought the Carnita Arepa was too. Nice vibe and would be a fun place for a group of youngsters.

Fantastic — the service was friendly and fast, and the music and food was great. I had the poached eggs with guacamole and a Bloody Mary. The Bloody Mary was wonderfully spiced and tasty. The eggs were perfectly runny on the inside, and the guacamole was delicious. The only possible improvement would be for the lovely smoky hot sauce that was served with the eggs to be a little bit hotter.

What an absolute winner! Hidden from the street, the courtyard out the back of Conch is one of my new favourite spaces in Auckland. It’s got a wonderful Latin American vibe, with a patterned brick floor, colourful banquettes & seats and — as is to be expected in a record store come café — delightful beats.
The menu’s pretty exciting too — think soft arepas, fresh & flavoursome tacos, quinoa cazuelas. I’d never had arepas before so I opted for them — 1 vegetarian, 1 pulled pork. As the waitress explained, Arepas are Venezuelan cornbread served lightly grilled, cut in half and filled with delicious goodies — sort of like a South American slider of sorts.
It’s hard to pick my favourite. The vegetarian one was filled with black beans, guac, a crunchy slaw and cilantro and the pulled pork was juicy as with some sort creamy dressing (mayo?) and pickles. They could of done with a touch more salt and more hot sauce (they did come with one but it wasn’t spicy enough for me) but that’s being fussy!
I’m really looking back to heading back from brunch — they’re open from 9am in the weekend! Ideal for summer.

In the middle of Ponsonby and feel like you could be anywhere in the world. Chilled out breakfast vibe out the back. Shits REAL

Following my visit to Conch I am going to have to rebuy a record deck. Their selection of vinyl is quite small but they have a great quality selection. Sometimes quality is more important than quantity, particularly when it comes to 12 inches. I was pleased with their selection of dance music but their main selection appears to be urban, reggae and funk.
A small selection of art and clothing is also available, but I didn’t really check it out — maybe next time.
I am led to believe the café out the back is a relatively recent addition and I don’t blame them really, diversifying the business to keep the dollar coming in is a wise move.

This place is so versatile! I say this because I have been here a few times, but all for totally different things. Once I came here for a music event, where a local NZ artist was playing and signing. The event was great, Conch managed to accommodate everyone that came and everything went off without a hitch, it was really well controlled.
Another time I had been searching for a specific gift and couldn’t find it in stock anywhere, online or in Auckland, except of course Conch! They have some really beautiful specialty items in store, in my case it was the perfect mens wallet! I rang them, they put it on hold for me and when I got in there it was so much cheaper than I had expected compared to the prices I had seen online, needless to say I was throughly impressed and will definitely come here again when it’s gift time for those hard to buy for people!

I have always felt a bit intimidated to walk into Conch, and I’m not really sure why. Maybe because it always seems to be filled with music lovers who probably have a much vaster vinyl collection and musical knowledge than me, I don’t know. But I toughened up and went inside the other day, and I was pleasantly surprised — there was a great chilled atmosphere in the shop with an awesome funk record playing in the background, and a very helpful non-​discriminatory dude at the counter who made sure I was ok just browsing. They have an impressive range of hip hop, jazz, funk and downtempo CD’s and vinyl records, which although not cheap, are all in fantastic condition. They also have some cool t-​shirts and shoes (from first glance this was mostly male apparel) and also a variety of headphones on offer for the audiophiles out there. And if you’re visiting when hungry, well they’ve got that sorted too — there is a backyard area where you can enjoy breakfast, lunch or just coffee when you are finished with all your record browsing.

Have you ever been to the café out the back of Conch on Ponsonby Road? It feels like an unknown little pocket of goodness that’s right under everyone’s noses but you’re one of the few special people who know about it. I mean, when you walk past Conch it looks like a fairly dark and gloomy record store, and you have to second-​guess yourself as to if you’re cool enough to cross the threshold. So the fact that they’re now sporting a sun-​filled, courtyard serving food is a great thing.
There is a brunch and a lunch menu, both of which are short and interesting. Come lunch time, the staff turn to their woodfire oven to create three simple dishes; ratatouille, chicken drumsticks with spicy polenta crust, and tacos filled with slow cooked lamb and salsa. It’s casual yet rustic, and seems to suit Conch down to a tee.

What is Conch. Conch is this weird enigma to me, because I walk past every day and it just eludes me in this kind of indescribable way. I mean, I get the nuts and bolts of the place. It’s a very hip record store that caters to a pretty niche audience and sells super expensive headphones and other cool pieces of music consumption paraphernalia. They also sell coffee and little treats. They’re pretty on trend at all times, partly because they sort of buck whatever trendinesss is and just operate on their own level. It’s cool. It get it.
Something about the place really piques my interest though. I can’t quite nail what Conch is. What it stands for. Who is the ‘Conch market’? Is it the guys who are always sitting outside drinking coffee? Every day they drink their coffee there. Don’t they have a job? Are the djs? Is this what a dj is? Is Conch for djs? I dunno. Seems like a cool shop but I don’t know why. They also have tasty beverages.