Herald Review: * * * *
Address: 82 Hinemoa St, Birkenhead
Phone: (09) 419 9082
Web: eightpointtwo.co.nz
Open: Dinner Tues-Sat
Cuisine: New Zealand
From the menu: Mahogany roasted salmon, vine ripened tomatoes, tomato vinaigrette $17.50;
Spiced duck breast, green beans, witlof, herb gnocchi $28;
Pear and kiwifruit crumble, vanilla bean ice cream $12
Vegetarian: Dishes on menu
Wine: New Zealand-made
KEY POINTS:
Drag your eyes from my peerless pearls of prose, if you can, to the fiddly little box with phone numbers and those infernal webology addresses. Check "Cuisine" and "Wine".
Lately we've been cast into national despair by heroes failing to deliver (not enough Aucklanders, I hear you say, although the writing was on the ball when the Herald published their old schools - nary a Wellington College old boy among them).
It is chest-thumpingly good that we can take pride in our more macho achievements, and today's restaurant epitomises many.
Cuisine (even if the chef is a Brit). Wine (no arguments there). Service (okay, the wine waiter had the faintest touch of a European accent). Design (Peter Reid, as stylish a Kiwi boy as ever came out of ... um, Belfast).
Enough smart-arse. Allow me to rabbit on about Eight Point Two - everything that's good, even great about Kiwi food, wine and style in 2007. Even if it is on the North Shore (and we'll come back to that).
Eight Point Two. Patrons are Lindsay Swannack and Jane Raybould, he from Harbourside, she from Killarney St Brasserie, both of Turtle Creek in Takapuna.
A century-old villa refurbished in Reid's favourite whites and Cape Cod feel; chapel-like inner courtyard and lava-style lights set into paving out front, this old darling hides behind her fan among the stately grand dames of Birkenhead.
Whitewood tables, white leather chairs, black-clad waiters; the combination sets off Nigel Marriage's menu. He was previously head chef at the New Angel, the Devon restaurant remade famous in John Burton Race's French Leave series. Not to mention, though we will, earlier sauteing and braising beside Burton Race and Raymond Blanc, and at Burton Race's two Michelin star l'Ortolan.
Marriage's kitchen at Eight Dot Thingummy is open to the punters.
Jude and I, seated near it, are thunderstruck by the assured, near-wordless ballet of the company at work.
Marriage is made in Birkenhead. Swannack tells me he's been here five months, and "he's planning to stay for a very long time".
We like his menu. It is written in plain English. Not a sumac or a brandade or a bichon frise to be had. Sirloin, spinach, Cafe de Paris butter, caramelised onions and potato. Gotcha, mate, and I'll have ...
Well, not that. I began with rabbit rillettes, smooth and herby pate on recently baked bread with crunchy and faintly pickled cauliflower, onion and carrot. Jude taste-tested and I thought she was about to renounce the Engine Room's pate and swear allegiance to this.
She swerved past black pudding (perhaps too plain English) to goat's cheese, simpler and tastier than many city menus' variations on that theme. Golden, deep-fried, pear slice dripping in honey glaze. Old, classic ways are so often best.
Much negotiation over the mains. We settled for "pork and lamb, meet you at halfway and we'll swap plates". Marriage crusts pork loin with walnuts, cooks it down to near disintegration, shreds cabbage in that thing chefs do without amputating fingers, and bakes potatoes in cider, which is the second best thing to do with it.
He roasts lamb rack and rump, slivers courgette, and presents them with white-bean ravioli (the orange note must have been passing capsicae) and rosemary jus.
Jude and I are in two minds. One mind says the flavours are well-balanced, he is a superb technician. The other says the meals don't quite sing. Jude is Capricorn, I am Libran. It's that old pragmatic v poetic thing. We swap plates. We are happy, if not quite entranced. I like pork with crackling that does.
Dessert. Chocolate fondant. Not because either of us likes chocolate, rather because everyone's doing it this year and it's important to compare. Not that too many compare with this rich, gooey, sticky nirvana and mandarin segments in citrus sauce. Died and gone to Valrhona.
Eight Bar Whatchamacallit's service may leave something to be desired, but I'm darned if I know what it is. We were attended by a poised young woman who said she was on her second night; if she was telling the truth, she has a remarkable career ahead. If I was pedantic, I might dock half a mark for the wine waiter who presented well-constructed matches but didn't explain why the predictable Craggy Range Block Syrah 05 worked with the pork and the remarkable Gimblett Gravels newcomer, Alluviale Merlot Cabernet Franc 05 sat beside the lamb.
I promised to mention the Shore. A passionate Shore girl chides that I never have a good word for any restaurant over the water. Well, Frances, now I have. In fact, my affection for the place is positively embarrassing. The Engine Room. Eight Point Two. Verbena. I may have to consider ... No. I ride a Vespa, and after those revelations about the bridge ...
