Aquamatta, Auckland CBD

Sous-chef Ebano Palazzetti with his tuna carpaccio. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

Herald rating: *** 1/2

Emma and I met in the Chancery, which a lot more people should do. It's the only place in the city that functions as a true piazza. People shop. People meet. People eat. People watch. Which is why it deserves to have a trattoria.

Aquamatta (babelfish gives "crazy water", which sounds almost as beautiful as "waitemata" in te reo) has been here for a couple of years. The chefs have names like Camillo Bisaccioni and Simone Piva so you assume they know what they're cooking about.

Even more so when the menu says they make all their breads, fresh pasta and sausages. It also has notations like gf for gluten-free, df for dairy-free, v for vegetarian and * for "may use frozen ingredient". These people care about what we eat. Possibly as much as we do.

Emma and I do care about what we eat, which was why we had chosen Aquamatta. Or rather, I had. "I have a yearning for the good old days," I'd said, "a comfort-food thing. When a meal was an entree, a main, and dessert."

"What you mean," she laughed, "is that you're over tapas."

I'm fond of O'Connell St, The Grove, the occasional Otto's. Sometimes you want something a little more disteso. With its black plastic chairs and cafe-style cabinets, bookcase and artworks, that's Aquamatta. The bill is more relaxed, too.

Relaxed, informal, but proper food. Here we could take the full tour from a plate of olives through pasta, on to lamb racks, detouring into contorni and coming on home with ... well, we'll get to that.

Emma beamed when the waiter put the words "tuna, capers, artichokes, cherry tomatoes and rocket" in close proximity, and was even happier when her salad arrived. The tuna was perfect, she opined, lightly seared, if the kitchen's use of lemon was slightly heavy-handed.

I have difficulty seeing the point of tuna. You might as well eat chicken, is my philosophy. But the artichokes and black olives came with lamb cutlets, so I had those. Classic Italian with a modern twist is the promise, and so it was.

Cutlets grilled close to but not quite charred, again with lemon undertones. The artichokes and olives were tucked inside oiled and fried breadcrumbs. Cucina povera: where what was once necessity (breadcrumbs taking the place of meat) has become fashion. And perhaps a useful and authentic way to use any of that left-over artisan bread.

On another visit - there's no expense-account spared at Viva - I'd enjoyed scaloppine di vitellone ai porcini con portobello al balsamico, aka the mushroom fix. Veal scaloppini are cooked with porcini and forest mushroom, and served with beetroot and potato puree. With Portobello mushrooms, roasted in balsamic. Staunch, rustic, it's quite the most successful dish I've tried here.

We shared a half-pineapple, rimmed with vodka, topped with raspberries. The vodka was more of a rumour than a fact.

They promise "a passionate wine list featuring unique names" so we asked the man to produce a nice, deep, mellow, sangiovese and he did. The unique names are largely Italian and rather well chosen, but they veer towards the pricey. Many inner-city lawyers eat here.

Aquamatta, we agreed, was a pleasant place to while away a lunchtime. "Would you come here for dinner?" I asked Emma.

"Yes," she said, "it could get quite buzzy of an evening. And," she grinned, "with all that choice on the menu, a group could easily put together a tapas meal."

AQUAMATTA

Address: The Chancery, CBD
Ph. 302 0478
Web: www.aquamatta.co.nz
Open: 7 days, breakfast, lunch, dinner
Cuisine: Classic Italian
From the menu: Sardines crumbed with sultanas, panfried, with endive and cherry tomato $16.50
Gnocchi with pork sausage, white wine, black truffle pate, grana padano in a creamy sauce $22.50
Osso buco with grana padano and saffron $33
Vegetarian: Absolutely
Wine: Discerning, expensive