Herald on Sunday rating: * * * 1/2
Address: 129 Westend Road, Westmere
Phone: (09) 3763590
Open: Tuesday - Friday from 4pm; weekends from 10am
Ambience: Dark and stylish
Vegetarians: A few options
Watch out for: The butchery next door
Bottom line: Tapas, again
The Westmere Butchery is one of the glories of civilisation. (This may not immediately occur to vegetarians, I know, so they will just have to take my word for it).
They make fabulous sausages - the senior members of staff come from England where they take sausages seriously - and they'll cut what you want the way you want it.
They don't quite have pencils behind their ears but they always seem glad to see you and when you ask for something they don't point to foam trays in display fridges with an expression that says "If it's not in there, we don't have it."
I was thinking warm thoughts about their rolled shoulders of pork as the Professor and I passed the place on the way to Adelie.
I don't get to eat pork much at home, because the Professor professes not to like it. This dislike didn't seem to inhibit her from enjoying more than her share of Adelie's double-roasted soy and cinnamon pork belly with fig relish - but I am getting ahead of myself.
Adelie is near the intersection of West End and Garnet roads in between the butchery (did I mention the butchery?) and an Asian takeaway place that used to be called A&E (for Asian and European) until someone got wise to the fact that those letters sent the wrong message.
It - Adelie that is - was formerly Garnet Bar and Kitchen, part of the empire of the enterprising Luke Dallow of Sale St fame and before that, it was an upscale pizza place that I only went into once because the staff were so up themselves.
It always seemed to me an odd place for a bar - at a busy intersection where, if you sat outside, you could smell the rubber on the cars cornering too fast. But the recent change of owner prompted me to check it out.
The refurbished interior maintains the same sense of Stygian gloom that pervaded Garnet, which is doubtless very fashionable, though I can't say I find it cheery or welcoming. The Professor said it reminded her of an English pub but the profusion of hard surfaces makes it an unduly noisy echoing space.
It was certainly noisy on the Friday evening when we first dropped in when a group of barely post-pubescent men in sharp suits were engaging in some professional back-slapping.
Maybe the recession is over and merchant bankers who have just started shaving are busy working on the next one.
On our second visit, on a Tuesday evening, the bass-heavy music had been replaced and, cheeringly, the barman remembered that the Professor likes water without ice.
The food, served on rectangular platters that make sharing easy, includes some failures - the smoked beetroot and goat's cheese came on discs of stodgy pastry - but also some crackingly good stuff: marinated salmon wrapped sushi-style and served with a creamy wasabi dip and some wicked pickled cucumber; shredded confit five-spice duck in a savoury crepe; the aforementioned pork belly, nicely dry and crisp, not fatty; and the piece de resistance - slices of rare eye fillet on a bean puree atop crisp potato rosti.
These are not tapas as they recognise them in Spain - or serve them at Mondial in Surrey Cres - but they're pretty damned good. I just wish I could shake the suspicion that tapas - not just here, but everywhere in Auckland - is another word for giving you a quarter the food at half the price of a main course.
THE BILL
$106 for two
Tapas: $7-$15
