Caffe Latte, Point Chevalier

It's rare, but sometimes the food isn't the be all and end all. I've struggled with this post because, much as I really want to be purist and objective about it all, on this occasion I really can't.

Caffe Latte is about the only restaurant in Point Chevalier (if you discount all the horrible places around Point Chev shops), and whilst it's named like a coffee shop, it's actually a genuinely great local Italian restaurant. It's been there for ages, so I'm told, and it feels warm and welcoming, the sort of place where thousands of people have had a good time in the past. On the Friday night that the girls and I went, it was packed, and the two waitresses and the one chef dealt with the (small) crowd with friendly, efficient ease.

It's BYO, but they do have a small selection of wines and beers on offer, including Menebrea, a superb Italian lager which I've not seen outside of Europe. It's worth the visit just for that, frankly.

The menu is classic 'local Italian restaurant', and feeling the vibe I started with the beef carpaccio, which was really very good except for a smear of an oddly sweet, syrupy liquid on the side of the plate - initially I thought this might have been balsamic, but a sickly sweet sugary tang suggested maybe something less suitable. The main course, a great-sounding penne alla salsiccie, was pretty weird if I'm honest, with what seemed to be chunks of pretty workaday pork sausage lurking in an overseasoned, over-reduced tomato sauce which suggested powdered stock (a suspicion backed up by the open bucket of same clearly visible in the kitchen). Still, the pasta was perfectly cooked, and whilst it wasn't quite as expected, most of it disappeared.

So for a few moments there I was a little downhearted, but really I was still thoroughly happy. Sure, properly made stock would have helped, perhaps a little fennel in the sausages, but somehow we all came away smiling. This was weird.

I honestly don't know. Perhaps it was the service - friendly, welcoming, honest and relaxed. Maybe that the food wasn't pretentious, overdone, or willingly challenging (NZ chefs seem to love 'challenging' our palates with frankly bizarre concoctions). Perhaps it was the excellent pricing, the lively buzz, the fact that it's walking distance from our house... perhaps all of these.

Quite simply, this is exactly what you want from a local restaurant to which you'll return time and time again. You'd no more complain about the food here than you would in your friend's kitchen (and it's a damn sight better than some I've had there...). I count myself lucky to be living nearby, and it's taught me that sometimes you don't eat out just for what's on the plate.

We'll be back.

Caffe Latte

149 Point Chevalier Road

Point Chevalier

Auckland

(09) 846 5303

Sal's NY Pizza, CBD

On one of my first trips to New Zealand, several years ago, I was introduced to Hell Pizza. At that point I was considering whether moving over here was a good idea or not, and this appalling experience chalked up one point under the header 'con'. When they opened up on North End Road in Fulham some months later, I went along to see if I was still right to be appalled. I was.

So beyond a good experience at GPK, I'd pretty much written off pizza over here. Some countries just can't do certain things - Spain can't do bacon, for example. I'd quietly mourn the lack of a decent pizza from time to time, and I'd generally have to do something like take in the view from the top of Mount Eden to compensate.

Now, all I have to do is to head to Commerce Street, where an unassuming shop in long line of equally unassuming places sells some of the best pizza I've had in a long, long time. Sal's make much of their NY heritage, and rightly so - from the doughy, yeasty base through the phenomenal sauce and the restrained, focused toppings, it's a brilliant pizza. I'm told that actual New Yorkers have been known to give it the seal of approval, too.

Authenticity aside, it's an experience not to be missed. $28 seems like a lot for a takeaway pizza, until they hand you all 18" of it - a foot-and-a-half of pepperoni-covered pizza heaven. This is more than enough for two, plus lunches the following day, where it stands up just as well (and to be honest you'll have been thinking about it all morning).

They do $5 slices as well, and those in the know have told me that it's worth getting down there when turnover's high, at lunchtimes. Their topping list is thankfully restrained - no jam, chicken, apricots, avocado here - so if you're more familiar with the likes of Hell's 'thirty toppings and they all taste the same' variants, get yourself down to Sal's and find out what pizza actually tastes like.

Oh, and if you order within the CBD they'll deliver to you on a Segway.

Sal's NY Pizza

8 Commerce St

Auckland

(09) 379 7257

The Long Room, Ponsonby

Is Ponsonby a bit tedious? Something in me wants to think so based on awful places like Estasi, and the general type of clientele that always seems to be stealing the oxygen around those parts, but recently a few things have made me reconsider. The excellently simple $25 lunch at GPK, for example, and the ever-brilliant Landreth & Co seem to stand out from the pretense and PR fluff; down-to-earth, quality places where the food comes before the hair, so to speak.

I'd been a bit wary about the Long Room, as it opened a few months ago to a bit of a fanfare, and promised to be a sort of smaller version of Sale Street, and so far so yawn, really. Wandering past it on a Sunday though with an Aussie in tow, I thought we might as well give it a go. Since we were there. In Ponsonby. And Landreth & Co was like, a mile away.

And you know what, it's not that bad. Spacious, pleasantly gloomy inside, nicely airy outside and totally open between the two spaces, it seems bigger (longer?) than it is and although you're right on Ponsonby Road, it doesn't quite seem so close. The menu holds no real surprises, the usual smattering of modern Euro, nonspecific Asian and so on, but that's sort of why you come to a bar for food, right?

Prices initially look on the steep side for this sort of place, with mains up to around $28, and something in you begins to wonder what on earth they're playing at, until your waitress cheerily informs you that the starters will be plenty for most people at lunch so probably not to bother with the mains. At $17ish, that's much more palatable. Service here is like this; friendly and honest, if somewhat over-attentive. When you come back to the table and see that neither of us have touched our menus since last time you asked, do you really need to ask if we're ready to order again?

Anyway, the food. I was feeling a bit random (ok, hungover) and so ordered the Grilled Corn Risotto w' Chipotle Hot Smoked Salmon & Jalapeno Creme Fraiche. The Aussie took the waitress's point about the main portion sizes as a physical challenge, and went for the grilled lamb loin. All the artful presentation in chefdom couldn't hide the fact that this was simply an obscenely whopping chunk of meat the size of a baby's arm, grilled a good medium as requested and surrounded by a flotilla of kumara gnocchi and green beans. All pronounced good; although I suspect sheer quantity might have taken the shine off the quality here.

Mine was a great little lunch dish; the risotto lively and flavoursome, looser and more pilaf-like than risotto-like, but more palatable and appropriate for it. The salmon was moist and tender, with the flavour of the chilli lending a subtly tangy smokiness to the fish. A couple of beers and an average coffee finished the meal off.

So it's arguably a bit pricey, but unless you're a horse or an Aussie with something to prove, you can probably get away with sticking with a starter. My only criticism is that, in this part of Auckland, there's a lot like this, and if your USPs are purely that you're in a good spot and you're a few dollars more expensive than your four or five competitors, you'll have to do a lot more than that to stay alive. Still, if you're passing...


The Long Room
114 Ponsonby Road
Auckland

+64 9 360 8803

www.longroom.co.nz

Rikka, Freeman's Bay

Japanese food is a bit of a closed book to me. I've long suspected that it's once of those cuisines where as you go up the scale in price, it's average (to a Western palate) until you get right to the very top, where it's astounding. Burgundy is a good comparison from a wine perspective - if you're going to bother with it at all, pay a decent amount for it and really get to grips with it.

So at one end of the Japanese scale, New Zealand has St Pierre's Sushi, an appalling affront to everything good about food. St Pierre's outlets can be found everywhere good food is not, and generally serve shockingly bad sushi of many varieties. I last ate at St Pierre's in February 2009, and since then have not been able to touch Japanese food. The memory of that slimy, greasy scrap of salmon stuck to a huge wodge of utterly vile vinegary rice was just too much.

This has all changed now though. I returned from honeymoon a few weeks back, and to kick off our first weekend together in Auckland as husband and wife, the missus and I headed to Rikka. I chose this place for two reasons: firstly as I needed to erase that awful memory from my mind and return to this cuisine on good terms. Secondly as I had a terrible craving for sake. Rikka has 'SAKE BAR' written outside in big letters, so it seemed like a good bet.

It's a really pleasant place to be, Rikka. The all-wood interior is warmly lit, welcoming and comfortable, and on the Friday evening we were there it was lively enough without being overbearing. The staff are excellent, knowledgeable, courteous and attentive. The views across Victoria Park Market are remarkable in the setting sun. All of this is secondary though: the food's the thing here.

After a preparatory Asahi and a peruse of the menu, I decided to do away with structure and just order whatever we felt like, and so it went something like this:

The first round kicked off with some steamed pork dim sum, fat, slightly wobbly and flavoursome, with a soy dipping sauce so good it was almost drunk straight from the dish. Also on the table was some crispy fried chicken, strips of breast meat delicately battered and fried, with similarly good sauces to dunk in. A gently warmed flask of sake worked beautifully alongside.

The second round was the sashimi round. I love good sashimi, much more than sushi (all that rice? Dull), and this was Good Sashimi. The first batch was the salmon, divided into two small piles denoting slightly different cuts. Fresh, firm and gleaming it was, and expertly presented, and my word was it ever good. There's a purity to the flavour of really fresh, well handled fish that defies explanation, and this was about as good as I've had.

Until the second batch of sashimi, that is. I'd spotted the magical word 'Toro' on the specials board, and I'd recognised this as the super-premium tuna belly sashimi that I'd only ever heard spoken about in hushed, reverent tones, and subsequently ordered four pieces. There are a few food experiences that really stick in my mind: my first properly cooked veal cut (in France), a stunning seafood pasta dish (in Sardinia), my first rare steak (England), and oysters fresh out of the sea (France again) to name a few. This ranks with those - a flavour so delicate it was almost ethereal, a persistent, lifted 'sea' character, a clear tuna flavour but much, much more refined than I've ever experienced before. We sipped our sake in silence, gazing into the middle distance with unfocused eyes.

The end of the sake jolted us into awareness again, and with the arrival of the third round came another bottle, chilled this time. The round in question consisted of a 'Triple Delight' of teryaki; salmon, chicken and beef, presented on their own little pedestals within a miniature garden arrangement. Amazing stuff. To be honest, they were all amazing, as were the tempura vegetables we'd ordered as an accompaniment, but after the Toro everything else was an afterthought.

After this, a bottle of frozen sake served as dessert, the slush entertainingly worked out of the bottle with a chopstick, and after a couple of excellent Japanese coffees we were on our way. We will be going back, that's for sure, and I wholly recommend you do the same, whether that Toro's on the menu or not.

It's been a week now, and I can still remember each and every flavour, clear and distinct. This was by far the best meal I've had in Auckland, without a shadow of a doubt.

Sake Bar Rikka
19 Drake Street
Freemans Bay
Auckland

+64 (0) 9 377 8239

I'm back

Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that it's been a while since my last entry, and there's really no excuse for this. If I'm honest there's a number of things at work here, partly that I got married a few weeks ago, which took up a bit of time, and partly that I became a bit sick of constantly writing about disappointing experiences, of which I'd had several. I had become bored, disillusioned and generally a bit apathetic.

This has changed. Last weekend I visited a restaurant that's restored my faith in Auckland's ability to turn out spectacular food, and I'll post a review on that shortly. In the meantime, however, a brief run-down on eateries of note from the past few months:

Satya, Ponsonby
Phenomenal South Indian food, defiantly authentic and richly, powerfully flavoured. This is astonishing stuff for Auckland, where it's a challenge to get a decent curry. Everything I've had from here has been great, but a personal favourite is their Vindaloo. The thing about this dish is that in most restaurants it's the 'physical challenge' choice; existing only as a vehicle for searing chilli heat and generally ordered as a way of 'impressing' someone. Typically though, a real Vindaloo has a robust flavour that's slightly sour (sour as in tamarind), reasonably hot but not aggressively so, and this one's spot on.


Grasshopper, CBD
Disappointing Thai. Limp, lacklustre, devoid of soul or interest. Dodgy furnishings, pallid flavours, avoid this like the plague. Unusual to find a Thai restaurant in New Zealand where every single aspect of it disappoints.


Big Al's Coffee and Sandwich, CBD
When the weather turns cooler again, Big Al will bring back the hot beef rolls, and for me that can't happen soon enough. Slow-cooked and pulled beef, stuffed into a baguette with gherkins, onions and horseradish. It's at the upper end of the sandwich price spectrum, but it's oh so very very good. So far, there is nothing to compare for lunch in the CBD.


Malinee Thai, Point Chevalier
Finding that you live within walking distance from a great takeaway is one of life's real pleasures - it's a bit like winning a food lottery or something. Particularly in Point Chevalier, which despite being a lovely corner of Auckland is a bit of a food desert (thank the Lord for the Westmere Butcher). Malinee Thai serves up well-priced, fresh, vibrantly tasty food, and they're more than happy to play 'hurt the white boy' if you're ballsy enough to ask for it 'thai hot'. Stand out dish has to be the prawn spring rolls, each one a massive fat prawn, covered in a mysterious but delicious stuff, wrapped in a crispy parcel. Tremendous.

Frankie's Wurstbude, Auckland Central

Have you ever picked up a plate of food, momentarily felt your arm drop slightly with the unexpected weight, and thought for a second "I'm going to be about this much heavier in about 10 minutes". Amazing, slightly worrying at the same time.

I love big food. There's a part of me that really warms to honest, hearty, unapologetic dishes, and the sausage features in many such plates. With mash, in a bun, in batter, in a stew... all good rib-sticking, stout fare. Attacking a serious sausage dish for a working lunch is not for the fainthearted.

And so it was with some trepidation that the salesman and I headed to Frankie's around 1pm. We had no idea what we were in for, and so I foolishly ordered a chilli dog with a Bavarian bratwurst. He, something equally sausagy with mash etc. When the server passed it to me over the counter, all attempts at masculine nonchalance failed me and I think the words 'Good... God...' may have passed my trembling lips. I was about to gain a good few kilos.

This thing was a clear foot long, with a definite... girth. Loaded with a portion of chilli that wouldn't look out of place served on its own. Topped with a generous handful of cheese, if those hands belonged to the BFG. Served atop a hotdog bun which had been literally flattened by the burden. I took a deep breath, rearranged a few internal organs to make space, and got involved.

'Good' doesn't somehow do this brat justice. Anything more expressive would seem somehow... wrong - you know what I mean. I'll settle for 'damn good', and that it was - juicy, densely meaty and remarkably subtly flavoured, covered in a great, rich chilli with a generous capsaicin whack, and cheese. Just cheese. Lots of it. I loved every single mouthful and yes, I managed the lot.

Get hungry, go there, order big and eat it all. If you love food, you'll love Frankie's.

Frankie's Wurstbude

Elliott Stables

Shop 4, 41 Elliott St

Auckland Central

+64 (0) 9 365 2700

Dida's Wine & Tapas Lounge, Ponsonby

Weekend lunches are one of the best things ever. I have been known to make them last all day, starting shortly after a summary piece of toast and coffee, and finishing with a G&T to mark the passing of lunch into dinner. I like long weekend lunches so much, I almost dislike weekday work lunches because they always fall so far short by comparison.

Dida's is a good place for lunch on the weekend. It's on my way to work, and spitefully reminds me as I pass it twice a day that lunch today will be a disappointment. So tempted, I vowed to turn as much of Sunday as possible over to Dida's. Not without a hint of trepidation, though, as I've long been a fan of Spanish cooking, and have visited Dida's excellent delicatessen a few times in the past, so expectations were high.

And they were met. Laid-back, friendly service delivered an array of superb dishes, and the afternoon slipped by with quiet chatter and bold, complex flavours. Stuffed artichokes were tender, rich mouthfuls; pork meatballs were moist and paprika-scented; accompanying Manchego and charcuterie were both excellent... I could go on, but you get the picture. The only mildly disappointing piece was the Chorizo al Vino, which in itself was a well-executed dish, but based on a good spicy pork sausage, sadly not chorizo. I'm coming to expect this, though, and regular readers will know this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine.

Tapas for me is about relaxation, grazing, and complex, comforting flavours. It's easy to get wrong by being over-fussy or generally crap at cooking, and I've been subjected to both many times both in the UK and abroad. Dida's gets it right, by focusing on great basic ingredients, taking time and care with their preparation, and serving them without ceremony in a pleasant, convivial place on Jervois Road. The only shame is that I'm not still there now, working my way through the back half of the menu.


54, Jervois Road,
Ponsonby
Auckland 1011

+64 (0) 9376 2813