FOOD TAKEAWAY
set in a takeout coffee cup. It wobbled into my plate, all dark and boozy caramel flavours flooding over the rich, cooked cream. Cotto has perfected the art of very grown-up desserts. Add an order of the chocolate nemesis cake with a salted caramel sauce (also $10) and eat, much later, with a small spoon in front of something intense and subtitled.
During the home-cooked days of level 4, Cotto offered an Instagrammed howto for its Auckland-famous spinach and goat’s cheese dumplings. The instructions confirmed what fans have long suspected: More butter. No, even more butter than that.
Is it still too much butter if it has been sizzled with sage and tastes like heaven and the herbs have gone as crunchy as crisps? Probably. But, also, I have not shaved my legs for 10 weeks. This is a pandemic and the usual societal rules no longer apply. (In my gluttonous defence, the dumplings were absolutely chocka with spinach.)
Both of the $22 pasta dishes had also been stained with spinach. A tortellini stuffed with smoked mozzarella was as lush and green as a spring lawn. It, too, was lacquered with butter to achieve the requisite degree of extremely rich. Eat your vegetables AND your feelings.
I have saved the best until last. Maltagliati lamb shoulder ragu. You might look at this descriptor and think “badly cut pasta in a meat sauce”. This would be akin to calling Dr Ashley Bloomfield the Director General of Health while ignoring the video clip of his funky vaxathon dance moves at Cannons Creek, Porirua. In short, this is a dish with hidden depths.
Dig into that verdant al dente pasta to find chunky nuggets of fork-tender lamb and a gently chilli-spiked sauce that pulls it all together without making it all about the sauce. In a contactless world, Cotto’s maltagliati is a cuddle in a takeaway container.
— Kim Knight
Kingsland Social: The $15 breakfast burger starred two eggs, a piglet’s worth of bacon and loads of avocado on warm buns sturdy enough to handle the car trip home. We added an old-school long cream doughnut to the order — squishy fresh deliciousness, with a bonus layer of creme patisserie under the piped whipped cream. (Kingsland Social, 462 New North Rd, Kingsland).
Banzai Restaurant: The Tardis as a brown paper bag: more and more containers of more and more food emerge until a $42 bento feast has marched across your table and into your karaage chicken-starved heart. Little pottles of matching sauces, big pottles of hot miso; sushi, sashimi and tempura vege. I’d dug the depths of the fridge searching for the Kewpie mayo but there was no need, because this was a take-out that anticipated my every need. (Banzai Restaurant, 583 Dominion Rd, Mount Eden).