The Green Crocodile Sandwich Bar, Darby St, Auckland City

BY SALLY CONOR

Working in the city sometimes feels a bit like an episode of Survivor; every lunch-break is like an immunity challenge and the race is on to find sustenance lest you perish or get voted off. Locating a simple sandwich can be as difficult as canoeing all the way around the island with a dead boar tied to your oar and sometimes you will end up eating something that resembles fermented yak’s testicles anyway. If, like me, you work in the city, you have probably scouted out most of the sweet lunch spots in town, and stick to your favourite haunts day after day, partly out of laziness and partly out of a fear that if you deviate from the tried-and-true, you might accidentally find yourself at McDonald’s eating pureed chicken gizzards cut with asbestos (otherwise known as Chicken McNuggets).

The discovery of a new lunch place is akin to finding fifty bucks in your old jeans pocket. The possibility! All of a sudden, one’s options are blown wide open. I recently received a tip-off about a sandwich place in town, down that sidestreet by The Body Shop and opposite The Recycle Boutique. I could hardly believe my ears! A place that makes ordinary sandwiches? In TOWN?? And what was more it had a cool name, dripping with exotic associations: The Green Crocodile.

I promptly went in search of this fabled food oasis. Now, I know of other places in town where you can get a regular sandwich made: there’s one in the SkyCity cinema complex and one in the Downtown foodcourt. However. These sandwich joints are in horrible neon MALLS. The very experience of visiting them is so unpleasant as to cancel out any pleasure, financial or gastronomic, incurred from getting a sandwich made to your tastes (NB Subway definitely doesn’t count because going in there is like visiting a mall anyway in its revolting same-ness, and all its branches smell of old meat and empty promises of ‘freshly baked’ bread… freshly defrosted blobs of stodge more like). The Green Crocodile is a regular shop on an actual street that catches real daylight and is staffed by real business-owners, not mall drones.

My first impression of The Green Crocodile was that half the title does not lie. It’s painted completely green on the inside! Cool! However, there was no evidence of a crocodile anywhere which was a little disappointing. I was at least hoping to be served by a person in a crocodile suit. Or maybe someone dressed like Steve Irwin. But in this case, reality was better than my imagination because I was served by possibly the nicest lady in the whole world. She called me ‘love’. She listened to my sandwich order like she really cared about me and my nutrition. And she wore beautiful shiny lavender eye shadow. A glance at the health certificate told me that this was Lesley. Lesley is my new favourite Auckland Personality. I am intrigued by her perennially cheery manner and dangly earrings. Her middle name is Pearl!

The sandwich itself was really yum: vogels with nice ordinary cheese, tomato and lettuce. I have simple tastes and am mostly a vegetarian but for everyone else there is a dizzying array of sandwich options for your eating pleasure. Lots of different breads, meats, salads, cheese, pineapple, pickle, condiments, cottage cheese… it was almost enough to make me order a double meat French roll with everything including two types of mustard. AND they do toasted sandwiches and burgers and milkshakes too! You can even buy yummy baked goods for one dollar. Just one dollar! NOTHING costs one dollar anymore. If this is the last bastion of the one dollar sweet in the whole of Auckland I wouldn’t be surprised. If only there was a booth and a jukebox I would make The Green Crocodile my new hang out à la The Peach Pit.

It seems like The Green Crocodile is one of a dying breed. I just heard last week about the imminent closure of another of my favourite lunch joints: Ima on Shortland St. Yael who owns and runs and cooks at Ima has been driven out by the exorbitant rent in central Auckland. She and Lesley operate at opposite ends of the lunch spectrum in terms of cost and ingredients (I like a delicious $8 Moroccan Tuna pie from Ima just as much as a $4.50 cheese sarnie) but they have one thing in common: they make their food with love and understand that lunch is a time to feed more than the coffers of the fast-food chain conglomerates. It’s about eating something that was made just for you with real food value and actually enjoying it. It’s about being able to zone out and drop fresh lettuce and chutney on your lap while you check your facebook page. It’s about somebody calling you ‘love’ even though they don’t know you.

Finding The Green Crocodile is another one of those Auckland moments for me – when you discover a new gem sparkling in amongst the dusty old scoria. A gem staffed by genuine people unaffected by both overpriced High St wankery and the mass-market sterilisation of the city. I intend to make Lesley my friend and enjoy many a chocolate milkshake whilst reading New Idea at the little table in The Green Crocodile. Ronald McDonald can go fuck himself.



***