PAN-LATIN FLAIR
Kim Knight is entranced by Brazilian fusion on K Rd
An occupational hazard of dining out all the time is boredom. Sample one duck fat donut with three-cheese syrup and you’ve sampled them all. Trends come and go. Beef tongue was the new short-ribs were the new lamb shank and I expect it’s only a matter of time before salt and pepper squid gets another summer under a rocket salad-soaked sun.
In a crowded market it takes something special to achieve cut-through.
At Tempero, I spent ages trying to figure out the correct word for the state of my taste buds. Excited? More than that. Entranced? I googled a definition: “To fill someone with wonder and delight, holding their entire attention.” Exactly.
Auckland is having a South American moment (witness rave reviews for Tacoteca, Milenta, etc) but when I told a deskmate who is married to a Brazilian that I was going to what I’d thought was a Brazilian fusion restaurant, his response was lukewarm: “For your sake, I hope it’s more fusion than Brazilian …”
On my recommendation, he will be eating his words as soon as he can get a booking.
Tempero describes itself as “pan-Latin”, by which it means both the food and drink draw inspiration from across the subcontinent. If the Brazilian components provide the greatest point of difference to other Auckland offerings, then the slightly more common Mexican mole negro allows for a “compare and contrast” critique — and wow, does it deliver. I tasted cinnamon and dark chocolate and then simply sank into a deep and earthy euphoria.
According to our waitperson, around 30 ingredients and five hours of the chef’s life go into the sauce that smothers a confit chicken leg ($38). It comes with a pile of soft, buttery carrots that, I confess, did not leap off the page yelling “pick me”. On the plate, however, they made sublime sense — of the earth and from the earth. Chicken mole with carrots is a weighted blanket for your soul.
Tempero (in the Karangahape Rd space previously occupied by the Peach Pit) was created by chef Fabio Bernardini and partner Tiffany Low. Bernardini’s impressive resume includes The Grove, Mr Morris and an executive sous chef position at Pujol, Mexico, which is currently 13th on the World’s Best 50 list. Low, meanwhile, works the floor with aplomb. We dropped a mezcal glass, it bounced hard and she made a joke about robust glassware and concrete surfaces. It was a small, warm moment that made me feel like a regular; like this was a place I should come back to.
Honestly, I’d have been back for breakfast. Brazilian baked beans are deeply unattractive. The absence of tomato makes them look like sludge and yet, somehow, these are creamier and, well, beanier than any others I’ve tasted. Add a few wodges of pork crackling and hot-from-the-oven pao de queijo ($15 for five) to create an entree you’ll wish you could take home for brunch. Tapioca-flour cheese breads have featured on a few Auckland menus now — Tempero’s are the lightest and tastiest in town. There is salsa and then there is salsa tatemada, in which all the usual suspects (tomato, chillies, onions) are subject to a grilling that spectacularly amps the flavour. Add chopped macadamias and then dunk a whole soft-shell crab in this dense, textural mess. “I could eat four of these,” said James, who was not paying the bill. They’re $29 apiece but, for any jaded foodie who thought they had eaten every soft-shell crab in the city, they are also worth your investment.
At Tempero, the familiar becomes more interesting. And the unfamiliar? Farofa ($12 with flecks of pancetta) turned out to be toasted cassava flour. It reminded me of a savoury blitzed biscuit cheesecake base before you squash all the bits together. Our waitperson described it as a kind of DIY thickening
and we deployed it liberally, enjoying the transition from crispy to mushy on the sauce that came with the acaraje ($36).
Bernadini’s background is fine dining, but here he takes a street food staple — a deep-fried ball of ground legumes and onion — and serves it as a vegan option, chock-full of okra and palm hearts, on a coconut-creamy vatapa (minus the apparently traditional seafood). Did it taste like one from Brazil? I have no idea. Would I order it again? Definitely.
If you haven’t consumed a South American food dictionary ahead of your visit, don’t worry. A large part of Tempero’s charm is the origin stories that arrive with the food. Staff want you know and love this food like they do and the self-assuredness of the delivery is hard to resist. The maxim that says confidence makes people more attractive? Apparently you can also apply it to a bowl of beans or a pile of pickled mussels ($16).
My childhood fridge always contained the latter. Big jars of home-steamed shellfish packed into vinegar, sugar and onion and left to marinate. Sharp, sweet and a little chewy. Tempero softens the effect with, I think, olive oil, and adds cubed capsicum, fresh parsley and dried flecks of something I can’t quite pick. “Thyme? Oregano?” I ask the waitperson as he removes our empty plate.
“Mexican oregano,” he says.