Bowmans, Mt Eden

By EWAN McDONALD for viva

"Really quiet in here tonight, isn't it?" said the man who was paying his bill just before me. It is one of the nicest compliments that a restaurant can have, because it means that it's a surprise when only five or six of the 30 or more tables are occupied.

And when that restaurant is in a village like Mt Eden, surrounded by homes, it's an added compliment, because it means that the management is attuned to the neighbourhood and has judged its likes and dislikes. Which, plainly, Bowmans has done over its five years, and perhaps it doesn't hurt that the owners, Richard Lewis and Charmaine Walsh, live nearby.

We wrote about Bowmans 18 months ago and said that visit wouldn't be our last. It hasn't been: there's a pleasing familiarity about the room, created by ripping out the dividing walls between two old shops, leaving the beautiful leadlight in place, and using French vanilla walls, dark wooden floors and starched white tablecloths, blackboard menus on the walls, to create a look of aged, understated elegance (which we had planned to show you in a photograph but this restaurant is strangely publicity-shy).

Bowmans' ambience might be pleasantly familiar but that doesn't curb chef Malcolm Grant's spirit of adventure. His mission is to produce "New Zealand cuisine with Pacific Rim and European influences". London tastemakers would have us believe that "nobody uses the f-word any more," that fusion (for which read Pacific Rim) is out of favour, that it's not easy to apply techniques of one cuisine to the ingredients of another.

American humorist Fran Lebowitz' take is, "People have been cooking for thousands of years. If you're the first to think of adding lime juice to scalloped potatoes, there's probably a good reason why."

Well, that, to put it politely, is a load of cockles. If a cook can pull off deep-fried lamb ravioli on a salad of mint with a dressing of chilli lime, or roast duck breast on slow-cooked red cabbage with grilled figs, more power to his gas hob.

Grant's menu features cross-cultural combinations such as pan-fried chicken livers on toasted brioche with baba ghanoush, wilted spinach and a marsala jus or roasted spicy dukkah-coated lamb rump with a truffle oil mash, pickled spiced beetroot confit and spinach (spinach does have a starring role in his winter menu, it must be said).

He also chalks nightly specials on the blackboard, where a smoked fish cake with spicy slaw and cucumber salad caught Ann's eye. "I'll have that. You eat the strange animals," she said, as I ordered chargrilled ostrich fillet with balsamic tomatoes, smoked havarti and lemon vinaigrette.

Each was a well-planned and executed dish, the fish cakes piquing the appetite, the ostrich subtle, just enough to give the taste buds a workout before the big match.

Again, Ann went to the blackboard for baked pork loin in mustard and mushroom sauce, adding some baked potatoes and a rather timid salad. I picked that lamb dish described above. Grant had conceived that as a complete meal, a number of tastes complementing one another to produce a four-star dish, while the pork seemed on the dry side, rather more ordinary.

Which is not a word that can be applied to desserts like three-chocolate creme brulee or the chocolate and orange mousse with expresso anglaise (oh dear, no one has spelled espresso with an 'x' since the 80s).

As we noted about Christian Roberts at the revived and revitalised Bella, here is another chef who creates wondrous desserts rather than assembling them from the Italian deli down the road.

Bowmans are proud (with good reason) of their cellar and wine-matching skills. Every dish and the blackboard is matched with an appropriate glass and you would have to be exceptionally knowledgeable, or unwise, to override the sommelier's suggestions.

From Nelson, Greenhough dry riesling was a tinder-dry match for fish cake; Sanctuary pinot noir set off the dark, smoky flavours of ostrich. Both mains were paired with cabernet merlot blends, Corbans supplying the partner for the pork and Villa Maria for the lamb.

The triumph came with the dessert wines, both from Italy: the rich, sweet, golden Sicilian Passito Di Pantelleria alongside the brulee, coffee and chocolately Pellegrino Cremovo Marsala helping the mousse go down.

Oh, this place is pretty good. So where was everyone else on a Tuesday night - Australian Idol? Coronation Street? - when inferior restaurants around town were jammed to the gunwales.

Oh, and they play middle-aged white man's music like David Gray (Dylan meets Leonard Cohen on Bleecker Street with a bottle of cheap red and a blunt razorblade) and old Slowhand. Something else to like about Bowmans, where familiarity breeds content.

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