Celebrity couple enjoy food for the Soul at Viaduct

Beyonce and Jay-Z wining and dining. Photo / Janna Dixon

Kim Crawford might be an award-winning winemaker but it cut no cloth when Jay-Z and Beyonce turned up at the restaurant he was eating at on Friday.

Crawford and his mates were turfed off the top deck at Soul bar and bistro at Auckland's Viaduct and positioned elsewhere when the headline couple turned up.

But Crawford didn't take a backward step later when one of Beyonce and Jay-Z's bodyguards tried to pull rank.

"I walked out the front of the restaurant to have a smoke," Crawford told the Herald on Sunday, "and I went to pull out my ciggies from my pocket and the bodyguard yelled 'No photos!'

"I said, 'f*** off, mate, this is New Zealand. It's just cigarettes. He did apologise, so that was okay."

Toting a camera and a cheeky grin, Beyonce took snapshots of her husband at the table, before turning the camera on the paparazzi and small group of media which had gathered outside the restaurant.

Television producer Julie Christie and former Metro editor Bevan Rapson sat nearby.

Beyonce ate snapper; Jay-Z chose John Dory and fries. They shared a bottle of chilled Gibbston Valley pinot gris and nibbled entrees of rocket and Parma ham. The bill came to $195.

Two officious, gum-chewing personal assistants, toting raspy New York accents, settled the account. Two bodyguards stood guard.

The couple enjoyed a romantic 90-minute late lunch before being ushered out the back door to a waiting Audi and then on to a helicopter to Mt Smart Stadium for the final concert of the New Zealand leg where Jay-Z played support act to U2.

Later that night, Beyonce, wearing a blue playsuit and towering Christian Louboutin leopard print heels, could be seen dancing and singing along to her husband from the privacy of a corporate box at the stadium. The celebrity couple flew out yesterday.

To escape prying eyes and avoid rush-hour traffic, the celebrity couple flew to the concert by helicopter on Thursday and Friday nights, taking off from Ponsonby Primary School, close to Mollies where they had been staying.

They gave the school a donation. Principal Anne Malcolm would not reveal the amount.