Cafe Bastille, Wellington

By EWAN McDONALD for viva

The old home town doesn't look the same as I step down from the plane. Even the airport has changed. It looks quite grown-up now, not the Meccano set that used to greet visitors to the nation's capital.

With these new cut-rate airfares you can afford to send yourself to Wellington to see your ageing mum more often and find out what of your schooldays has been knocked down since last time you went "home".

The wind hasn't changed, though. It still belts up the roaring forties from Antarctica, hangs a left at Pt Halswell and rips straight up your jumper as you cross Courtenay Place at the Embassy and walk a few yards up to the restaurant that has grabbed the city by the sweetbreads - Bastille.

To be correct, two restaurants. At No 18 is the Roxburgh Bistro, where the chef and owner, Mark Limacher, has won the national Corbans Wine and Food Challenge twice as well as local honours for outstanding chef and restaurant of the year. At No 16 is his new venture, a traditional French bistro in the hands of executive chef Scott Mason.

Any place that has a giant Pernod sign above the door and where you need to have passed School Cert French to read the menu is usually okay by me. Then there's the look. The long, narrow, 60-seat dining room is the traditional yellow, the night's food and wine specials are scrawled on mirrors next to posters from eras long gone, gold-globe lamps hang from the ceiling, a bar runs from absinthe to zazarac and, on top of it, a suitably stuffed cockerel. Wall-to-wall people: by 7 on a Friday night, as Mr Waller so inimitably put it, this joint is really jumpin'.

Or, this joint is really chompin'. The food is exquisite, though perhaps that's the wrong word because there's nothing subtle about any of it. Fellow Francophiles, slather over these: coq au vin, chicken thighs braised in red wine with lardons, baby onions, mushrooms; sirloin steak, Cafe de Paris butter, pommes frites; fish fillets with sorrel, white beans, garlic and saffron; black pudding with apple and horseradish mayo.

For those who lust after the truly French experience there's a tripe dish that takes six hours to make. Return to childhood this trip might be, but that's one memory I have no wish to revisit, even if the stuff is sneaked on to the plate under the cover of tonnes of garlic, tomato sauce and ham hock.

Thick, hot, cheesy, gutsy onion soup: formidable! Followed with pure pork (and yes, it was, every last mouthful) sausage, mashed potato, fried onions; washed down with a couple of glasses of a half-decent Cotes du Rhone.
Desserts are comfort classics, too. There's a chocolate mousse, creme caramel, tarte tatin, crepes with orange caramel sauce and Grand Marnier (mentioned in detail because it has been thoroughly tested, and passes) or a vanilla poached pear with prune and Armagnac icecream (ditto). Which leaves the three French cheeses. Which we didn't.

Service is brisk, in keeping with the atmosphere. Ann thought the maitre d' so Gallic that she was convinced his name was Luc and he was from Carcasonne, until he told her in a thick Kiwi accent his name was Ian.

They say that in the end, you get what you deserve. So how come Melbourne got France-Soir, Wellington got Bastille and Auckland got Chateauneuf?

And one last thought on eating out in the capital: Stellar's "plates" or mains are a uniform $19.50. Bastille has one dish over $20, the $22.90 sirloin steak. Is that why we had to perch on bar stools to eat at Bastille yet can walk into any restaurant in Auckland on just about any night without a booking? Could it be something else in the food chain - our landlords are greedier?

Open: 7 nights from 5.30pm

Owner: Mark Limacher

Executive Chef: Scott Mason

Food: French café classics

Smoking: Mais non

Vegetarian: Mais oui

Wine: Worth the trip for them alone

Noise: Chatter

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