Dine, Sky City Grand Hotel, Auckland

Dine's twice-cooked fivespice quail costs considerably less than the steak. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Herald rating: * * *

On the Tuesday night we went to Dine, the vast grand lobby was empty, except for the man playing the piano. It's an old-fashioned gesture from times when such touches were meant to make you feel a bit posh, that you were having a special time.

Dine itself is supposed to make you feel a bit posh. You certainly feel a bit special once you get the bill.

Not that this should come as any great shock. It's unlikely you'd wander in here thinking you'd happened upon a noodle joint. So the bill would be fine - if you did leave feeling you'd had a night to remember.

There is something old-fashioned about Dine, despite the huge, looming lights, which hover like UFOs.

There is all that dark wood, faintly Oriental in feel but which also puts you in mind of a gentleman's club. It is a very masculine room, which is why, at the tables with the wing-chair at one end, the blokes naturally gravitate towards it.

Our bloke, the Physicist, didn't. But we refused, so he - perhaps taken by Dr Brash's gentlemanly example - reluctantly agreed to take his proper place at the head of the table.

It's a silly chair. You can't sit back in it, so you eat your tea perched forward, and you are still at a remove from the rest of the table.

There are other silly things about Dine. If a test is that you'll have a meal to remember, it passes. I doubt I will ever forget the tahini pannacotta I had there the first week the restaurant opened. I wish I could forget it, but I couldn't, so a return visit, I hoped, would work as a sort of reverse therapy. How do you get a repressed memory?

I thought, they can do mad, horrible stuff; let's see if they can do simple stuff well. So I'll have the whitebait fritter and the beef, both specials.

The fritter was light, eggy, and stuffed with fish. It hadn't been mucked around with too much ... a bit of coriander on top, a sliver of chilli.

The steak came with a rave preview. "You do know it's a $50 dish?" said the waiter. Well, no, I didn't. But what the hell. Let's see what a $50 steak is like. You know what it should be like. It should be the best bloody steak you've had in your life.

Well, it wasn't, not by a long way. It was tough in parts, and sinewy in others. I don't remember anything else about it. How could I?

Madame was fussing about her fried cheese salad. To give it its full grand title it was: Salad of fried Zany Zeus haloumi spinach, water chestnut, pecan, orange and sun-blushed tomatoes with chilli dill dressing.

She liked the fried cheese, but she said the spinach was horrid. I thought she was just carrying on because she is not a good girl at eating her greens, but it is true that there were stalks. And the spinach should not be tough.

And while we're moaning shouldn't the bread be warm?

And what is this with sun-dried tomatoes in the rolls and in her salad? Are sun-dried tomatoes now retro food? Oh, hang on, they're now "sun-blushed".

Whatever they are, they were horrible the first time around. And why did the waiter come to the table to take our food order when nobody had been by to take our wine order?

The Physicist was happy with his lightly smoked venison osso bucco, which really was wonderful end-of-winter-cheer-you-up grub, with a lovely velvety sauce.

Madame's roast salmon was a decent, if hardly exciting, piece of fish.

And here we are at pud. Chocolate delice with chestnut parfait, cocoa shortbread and hazelnut praline. Vanilla meringue with tamarind mascapone, banana sorbet. Pomegranate creme caramel with rhubarb and ricotta sorbet. Just typing in all those ingredients makes you weary.

We quite liked the chocolate pud. The meringue was like a disc of plaster of paris - a hammer would have been handy. And then, a feat of quite remarkable culinary magic. That creme caramel in which the ricotta collided with the pomegrante in a palate-curdling way left me beginning to think quite fondly of that tahini pannacotta.

Address: Sky City Grand Hotel, 90 Federal St, Auckland City
Phone: 09 363 7030
Chef d'cuisine: Peter Gordon
Head chef: Cobus Klopper

From the menu: Twice-cooked fivespice quail on pickled eggplant, peanut and coriander salad with black-bean mirin dressing, $22; crab and tofu-crusted hapuku on roast red kumara, enoki mushrooms and asian greens with red lentil, pandan coconut broth and fried curry leaves, $35; sticky date and walnut pudding with soy caramel, pandan icecream and poached tamarillo, $16
Vegetarian: I never thought I'd say so, but I'd almost have preferred fried cheese to my $50 steak. Almost.
Wine list: Comprehensive, by both glass and bottle

Bottom line: We've had, obviously, worse meals. But you expect a hell of a lot at Peter Gordon's place. And we haven't had as disappointing a time in a restaurant since, well, the last time we ate at Dine.

* Read more about what's happening in the world of food, wine, fashion and beauty in viva, part of your Herald print edition every Wednesday.