The oxtail dish from Antoine's in Parnell.. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey
Herald rating: * * * * *
Address: 333 Parnell Rd
Phone: (09) 379 8756
www.antoinesrestaurant.co.nz
Open: Dinner Mon-Sat, lunch Wed-Fri
Cuisine: NZ with French undertones
From the menu: Wild mushroom and truffle risotto, prosciutto, fried duck egg $22*; Cured salmon fillet, seared, on artichokes with orange, juniper balsamic reduction $40; Pastis icecream with yellow beetroot and mint panna cotta $22
Vegetarian: All cults accommodated
Wine: Superlative
* Prices + GST
The chattering classes are plying their trade - do they do trade? - at the next table. The happiest days of their lives, the innards of recent operations, Hong Kong last week ("Yes, dear, this top was only $1000" - one presumes Hong Kong dollars), the party fundraiser
("Johnny came right up behind me and gave me a big smacky kiss on the cheek." Passion hitherto unsuspected in the PM-about-to-be). At the table behind, they are trade. Selling software by the pound. Rather, the Aussie dollar. We are not eavesdropping. It's just the bray, it is.
As it was, is now and ever shall be at Antoine's. Celebrating its 35th birthday, traditions set it apart from almost every other restaurant in Auckland. The formality. The deliberate old-worldness. The refusal to accommodate fads. The classic cooking, severe in application, flamboyant in execution.
Perhaps that is why many don't "get" the place. The surroundings, the formally inhibited waiters, butter-knives and salt-cellars. This is a restaurant for those who ate dinner at the table every night. Cobb & Co, it ain't. Perhaps that is why it is - I was going to type "almost exclusively" but there is nothing qualified about Antoine's exclusiveness - the preserve of the wealthy. Well, that and the prices, even before the excise is calculated.
Antoine's offers three menus every night, which is not as gluttonous as it may sound: the season's specials; the table menu, less frequently tweaked contemporary dishes; and then there is the Nostalgia menu. Greatest hits, if you prefer, for those who think the best change is not to change too much at all. In keeping with the celebrations, I've headed there. Becoming one of the chitterling classes.
Tonight, the celebrated tripe entree is obligatory. Few restaurants dare serve it, none as exquisitely prepared: the white meat simmered to the tenderness of chicken or fish, a rich nage of cream, sherry, onion and zaps of peppercorn.
Followed by oxtail. Braised in a tantalising red wine until the rich meat falls off the bones, spooned on to the plate from a substantial casserole that yields other treasures. Sweet baby onions. Musky mushrooms. Hearty meal: alongside, dauphinoise potatoes and broccoli are less enchanting.
Spared my insistence on Memory Lane, Jude enjoys tempura scallops on porcelain spoons of crab meat and what we taste and - being food critics - immediately identify as flying-fish roe marinated in wasabi. Okay, we asked the waiter. Jude is impressed.
On a truffle kick at the moment, she feeds her obsession with roasted quail because it's partnered with truffle and mushroom risotto and truffle jus. That's three in one sentence. She is happy.
Tradition dictates bread-and-butter pudding for me, somewhat upswept from the ones that fed seven of us around the Formica table; lemon, gin and sago jelly, a mango and mint salad for Jude. It may have had lemon, sago, mango and mint: after the first spoonful she did not especially notice. Or mind.
At the next table, they are proclaiming this "the best food in the world"; the pudding was great but that may be over-egging it. Enough to say that as it celebrates a remarkable birthday, Antoine's is as good as ever it was.
