Herald rating: * * *
Address: Quay & Albert corner, Downtown
Phone: (09) 379 2377 www.ariake.co.nz Open: Mon-Sat, lunch and dinner
Cuisine: Japanese
From the menu: Tuna sashimi $20 / 7 pieces; Seasonal vegetables, ground sesame seed dressing $6; Grilled fresh seafood with two dipping sauces $30; Suki-yaki $35 per person
Vegetarian: A-plenty
Wine: Limited; Japanese options
KEY POINTS:
The Japanese Culinary Academy has established the goal of setting a global standard for Japanese cuisine around the world. There's surging global interest in Japanese food but criticism from the Government about a lack of authenticity of restaurants" - NEWS
Suzuki hated hotels. You could never tell whether you'd woken up in Honolulu, Paris or ... or Tokyo. He checked his phone. It was Auckland.
Another day, another restaurant. He would have to determine whether the food was authentically Japanese. According to the government definition. He'd been happy as a beat cop, never wanted to join the SWAT team. But someone had to travel the world and check whether restaurants claiming to be "authentically Japanese" were. That was what the Sushi Wasabi And Teppanyaki Team was all about.
And he had to train a newbie. Constable Toyota had replaced Mitsubishi, chopped after the San Francisco mission, when she'd reported that a California roll was authentic.
Tonight's inspection seemed a no-brainer. Ariake, established in 1980, was almost certainly the first Japanese restaurant in Auckland. Still proud of its traditions: the wooden slatted windows, waitresses in kimonos, male staff in white collars and black ties, crayfish awaiting their fate in aquaria.
The SWAT pair sat near a local couple and Suzuki motioned Toyota to check out their opinions. The woman began with sashimi. She found it adequate but no better than many around the city these days. The woman said, "When so many restaurants do good sushi and sashimi, it has to be exceptional to justify higher prices, and this was not." Both enjoyed a little dish of pickled vegetables and edamame.
The couple's mains arrived. The man had ordered flounder, crumbed and deep-fried, fillets rolled into croquettes with cheese, its skeleton on the side of the plate. Toyota heard him say it was "too heavy on the coating, too bland on the cheese, hard to tell it was flounder". He said it was just as well the kitchen had left the body on the plate so he - or the fish - could remember what it had been in life.
The woman was enjoying a large bowl of steamed shellfish, though the sticky rice bowl was, Toyota reported, "too sticky, too heavy, not enough plum".
I wonder if they know authentic Japanese food, as defined by the culinary institute, Suzuki asked his partner. "I think they like it," Toyota replied. "The man has been to this restaurant before. He thinks that this time, the staff are not as helpful in explaining the menu and how to put the various dishes together.
"They see it as rather old-fashioned and a little tired. They are saying that the contemporary restaurants are presenting much more interesting, lighter food that is better suited to their New Zealand palate."
Suzuki grunted. They would not be happy in Tokyo. How was he going to explain it to the Diet?
