The table we almost didn't get at Amano, Britomart. Photo / Dean Purcell
The table we almost didn't get at Amano, Britomart. Photo / Dean Purcell
If you’ve recently tried to get a downtown Auckland restaurant booking for 7pm on a Saturday, you’ll know it’s as likely as a weekend with no rain.
Everywhere was booked. A special dinner for the in-laws was fast turning into roast chicken at home. Suddenly, a miracle: “I can getus into Amano,” announced my husband. Triumphant. Smug, even. We dressed up and turned up. At the restaurant, there was no record of our booking.
“Can I see your phone?” asked the man working front of house. He scrolled down the screen. “I was worried this might be the case ... "
Discreetly and quietly, he told us we were booked into Amano, Perth. This was not, he said, the first time he’d seen this happen. And yes, he knew what we were going to ask next - what about the $20-a-head deposit that Amano, Perth had demanded to hold our booking?
Why had an internet search sent us across the Tasman? Should the menu listing for “kangaroo gnocchi” have been a clue? I left my husband to ponder these questions and went outside to make an international call. I explained the situation to a woman in Western Australia who had, perhaps, not noticed our confirmation email address and phone number were a seven-hour flight away.
My argument fell on deaf ears. They were, she explained, completely full and they had held our table all day. “You’ve still got four hours to sell that table,” I said. “You agreed to the terms,” she replied. And then she got off the phone and immediately deducted AU$80 from our credit card.
Back at Amano, Auckland, the sympathetic maitre d’ shook his head. “I know it’s not illegal - but where’s the HOSPITALITY?”
Happily, I can answer that question. It’s with this Britomart-adjacent Auckland restaurant and its superb staff who somehow accommodated four people on a slammed Saturday night and then fed them the loveliest Italian they’ve had in ages.
After a short wait, we joined the end of a high bench (super comfortable and, in a large and sometimes noisy restaurant, possibly better suited to leaning in for close conversation than a regular table) and the rest of the night ran like clockwork. When two of us ordered the same wine, the waitperson helpfully suggested a carafe. When I mentioned that my father-in-law was a bread fiend, they delivered a plate of carbs I couldn’t see anywhere on the menu. There was a bowl for the tuatua shells and serving utensils for the shared dishes and ice buckets for the wine. We wanted for nothing, bar bigger stomachs.
Stracciatella/tamarillo and the seafood spaghetti at Amano. Photo / Dean Purcell
Amano’s portions are generous. We shared a plate of stracciatella, the curdy, creamy blobs of cheese brilliantly foiled by a tamarillo relish (and I don’t even like tamarillo). Smoked warehou paté got better and better as the fishy flavours came up to room temperature.
Two pastas, a risotto and a lamb for mains. Those pastas! Love, in a huge bowl. Rosemary’s lamb ragu was particularly good. It had the richness of a cream sauce (with no visible cream) and a robust, black olive-driven, backbone. Seafood spaghetti was made from semolina pasta, extruded appropriately winter-thick. The sauce was spiked with smoky nduja (pass that mopping bread) and is there anything more visually impressive than a bowl brimful of shells, claws and other briny signifiers? Seriously yum.
Seafood spaghetti. Photo / Dean Purcell
I feel like I am still learning risotto, a dish I first cooked according to the instructions on the back of a Diamond pasta packet. As an adult I came to understand that what I had been eating was actually a type of orzo and, faced with actual risotto rice, I would have to recalibrate my textural expectations. Amano’s was textbook-chalky and creamy, a rib-sticking contrast to the delicate chunks of scampi that studded my plate.
Stracciatella/tamarillo. Photo / Dean Purcell.
Amano has always hero-ed vegetables. Consider the baby cos with anchovy and parmesan - a deliciously salty and raw respite from the richness of our mains. Charred brussels sprouts were paired with crunchy chorizo crumbs and it struck me that entire generations will never know the ignominy of an overboiled sprout (the reinvention of this once-loathed green is, in its own way, as revolutionary as Netflix or fizzy tap water).
I hadn’t intended to review Amano. I didn’t photograph the drinks list for the wine writer, or take snaps of the dishes as memory joggers. The specifics of the night have blurred in the best possible way. Restaurants are in the business of hospitality - and what we experienced at Amano, Auckland, was a true and joyous expression of that word. Amano across the Ditch might take note.
Amano, 66-68 Tyler St, Britomart Place, Auckland. Ph (09) 394 1416. We spent $400 for four.
Kim Knight has been a reporter for more than 30 years and the Canvas restaurant critic since 2016. She holds a Masters in Gastronomy from Auckland University of Technology.
Full disclosure: I’m a massive Amano fan and can attest to never having had a bad experience there. But have I ever spent time dissecting their drinks list? Nope. Mainly because I’ve always been in a raucous group with far too much amazing food on the table. Which is how it should be, right?
So while my memory of the list is pretty decent, it’s not encyclopaedic. Kim will usually take a photograph of the drinks list during her meal to help me, however that didn’t happen this time because she was too sidetracked by the outstanding food and sensational service too. I didn’t fret because (as if they couldn’t be more helpful), Amano have published their drinks list online. Just go to “menus”, click “drinks” and get beveraging!
The cocktails are spendy at $22, but muddle me up a beetroot, antica formula, whiskey, amaretto, hibiscus & lemon or a concoction of kawakawa, gin, cocchi americano & olive oil, and all’s forgiven. Craft beers from Hallertau, Citizen, Sawmill and Cassels lead to a smorgasbord of aperitivi and then an internationally flavoured wine list where pretty much everything is available by the glass — excellent! Plus they have a “cellar” list, where you could drop $210 on a bottle of Dry River pinot or $2100 on a bottle of Sam Neill’s Two Paddocks pinot (but I’m suspecting that’s a typo).
Amano’s list, like their look, their feel and their food, is exotic, interesting, international and amazing. I love it when the drinks list is published online and constantly updated. Nerds like me can study up in order to sound flash in front of our friends and make our choices in advance. It also gives my wallet time to digest what it’s in for.
