Chef vs Critic
When a chef and a food critic agree on a city’s best wine bar, it pays to take note. By Alexandra Carlton.
Will our local experts agree on Auckland’s top restaurants?
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Is there one restaurant that nails the Auckland vibe?
SS Depot Oyster Bar and Eatery (eatatdepot.co.nz). Chef Al Brown is amazing and his food represents New Zealand cuisine. He cooks underrated local ingredients with generosity and honesty. LJ We have large Polynesian and Asian populations and The Blue Breeze Inn (theblue breezeinn.co.nz) gives you a taste of their cuisines. One of my favourite dishes is the tuatua, a New Zealand shellfish, which they do with their own XO sauce.
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Who does the best fine dining?
SS It might be cheeky to say but I really enjoy what we’re doing with Sid at The French Café (sidatthefrenchcafe.co. nz). It’s a New Zealand icon and my wife, Chand, and I loved it so much we thought we’d buy it. We reopened it last year under our name, doing contemporary New Zealand cuisine using only local meat and seafood. It’s the place to come and celebrate something special.
LJ There’s no doubt about it
– it has to be Sid at The French Café. It ain’t cheap but you get treated like royalty. The food has always been fantastic but Sid has given it an edge. It’s the closest thing Auckland has to perfection.
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Where do you head for brunch?
SS Fort Greene (fortgreene. co.nz) is an amazing bakery on Karangahape Road. It makes beautiful sourdough and baguettes in the morning. They do an incredible reuben sandwich, or one with spiced lamb and goat’s cheese, or the most delicious grilled fourcheese sandwich with pickles. It’s a very small menu but I kind of like that because it means they focus on making everything great.
LJ It doesn’t matter if you live on the city side or the North Shore, everyone in Auckland goes to Takapuna Beach Café (takapunabeach cafe.co.nz). It’s at the end of a beautiful sandy beach and you can grab baked goods and coffee if the wait for a table is too long. The food is interesting and modern; everyone’s doing avocado toast but they add goat’s cheese and burnt tomato vinaigrette.
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Where do you go for craft beer?
SS There’s a bar called Beer Jerk Bunker (beerjerk.co.nz) that serves 160 different craft beers. It’s so cool. I’m not a big beer guy but they’re super-passionate about what they do and always surprise you with something new.
LJ I’m an Aucklander but I have to defer to Wellington as New Zealand’s craft-beer capital. Having said that, there are some exceptional Auckland beers. There’s a terrific place on the city fringe called Hallertau Brewery & Biergarten (hallertau.co.nz). They do extensive flights – you can try about 20 beers if you want – plus they have wonderful hearty food, which I think beer cries out for.
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What about a great wine bar?
SS Apéro (apero.co.nz), which is owned by friends of ours, Mo [Ismo Koski] and Leslie Hottiaux. Mo has this amazing way with wine – you let him know what you like and he’ll surprise you. Leslie is the chef and she cooks incredible French food, like terrines. They serve sausage by the quarter of a metre and tasty charcuterie platters.
LJ Apéro. Mo always knows what you need, based on your personality and mood. When I go, he’s practically reaching for an Alsace riesling before I walk through the door. I sent an international pianist there once and he came back raving about it because he was able to taste 10 different natural and orange wines. You can say, “I’m grumpy, Mo!” and he’ll reply, “I’ve got just the thing for you.” ↓
And for a casual lunch?
SS On a weekend, I go to The Grounds (thegrounds.co.nz) with the family. It’s good for the kids because it has a big playground with a water slide. They’ll have toasties or dumplings and we’ll do a steak or pasta.
LJ You can’t go past Amano (amano.nz). It’s a huge, buzzy restaurant – it even has its own bakery – and does terrific lunch food. It serves lesserknown fish, which is popular now because of overfishing. For me, the best thing they do is the octopus. We have lots of it in New Zealand but you hardly ever see octopus on menus – probably because my husband catches it all and uses it for bait.
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Who does the best Māori cuisine?
SS Sisters Karena and Kasey Bird (karenakasey.com) cook Māori food that’s true to their roots but still very creative. They don’t have a restaurant but do pop-up dinners around the country. I had a dessert with apple, kawakawa, a native leaf, and kiwifruit at one of their dégustations. There were only three or four things in the dish and it was mind-blowing. LJ Pūhā & Pākehā (puhaand pakeha.co.nz), which does modern Māori-fusion food. It started as a food truck and now also has the most wonderful little eatery. They use a hāngi [traditional pit oven] and make the best tuatua fritters around. ↓
What’s your go-to market snack?
SS I enjoy the Sunday markets at Takapuna Beach (ilove takapuna.co.nz), which are quite close to my home. Gaston Rotisserie there does fantastic organic chickens. You can take them home and warm them up at night or get a hot chicken roll to eat right away. LJ I spend my weekends in Matakana, which has the best farmers’ market (matakana village.co.nz) in the region. Every Saturday morning, I have a whitebait fritter on a slice of white bread with butter and a squeeze of lemon. The fish are farmed by a local business, Manāki, that’s dedicated to producing sustainable whitebait.
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Is there an amazing restaurant that no-one knows about?
SS Maison Vauron (mvauron. co.nz) is a wine cellar with a cheese store and it also has a restaurant that’s only open on weekdays for lunch. It does French cuisine, like beautifully cooked confit duck, flat-iron steak or a bavette with roast potatoes. You can pick a wine you want to try from the cellar. It doesn’t have to be crazy – it
can be a $20 bottle or a $200 one. It’s a place that hospitality people know about but I don’t know if many others do.
LJ Cocoro (cocoro.co.nz), without a doubt. The chef, Makoto Tokuyama, grew up in a Buddhist temple in rural Japan and he wears his country on his sleeve. Makoto serves the most authentic Japanese food; his chawanmushi is just beyond. Cocoro is buried in a residential area and everyone I talk to about it has never been there.
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