Banque Gastro Bar 311 Remuera Rd
Ph (09) 522 6688
Rating out of 10
Food: 8
Service: 8
Value: 7
Ambience: 8
Our meal: $201. Two first courses, two mains and two desserts. Four glasses of wine and one dessert wine.
Wine list: Respectable with some top end entries. Reasonable selection by the glass from around $11.
Verdict: Describes itself as a gastro bar and the food is several notches up from the discredited gastro pub label. Efficient but not unfriendly service in pleasant surroundings.
The first proof that we were in for a good meal came with the pastry on my starter course. Oddly, many restaurants fall short in this basic culinary technique but here in my rabbit tartlet it was short, crisp and crumbly. The filling was pretty decent too, with a meaty, rabbit flavour.
I'm not sure whether the menu description "white rabbit" referred to the sort of meat or the fur that little Snowdrop had when it was being carried around by a golden-haired child. But I overcame my Watership Down qualms and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Scallops have few cuddly connotations and are hard to beat when expertly cooked, as they were here. The Banque menu is of the tried and tested variety, a fairly short selection of basics with three or four daily specials, and the treatments are well considered.
My main course of lamb loin, perfectly cooked, sat on a rich, braised bit of lamb shoulder and with the caponata merged into a glutinous unity - and that is intended as a compliment to what was a well-integrated dish. Our other main course had a similar unity. A sweet, glazed duck matched with the sugar of the kumara, offset with a little astringency from the citrus of the mandarins which my wife reserved as a palate cleanser. We could have stopped at this point, feeling well-fed, but the desserts, again a short list, were tempting and we succumbed, to a rich chocolate and hazelnut torte and to a very fine example of raspberry creme brulee.
The verdict from my wife was "professional, very professional". As we were in Remuera, where I suspect the demographics would show more inhabitants per hectare from "the professions" than anywhere outside Wellington, this seemed appropriate.
Professional can, of course, be a term of abuse, shorthand for cynical and calculating as in the professional foul which so rarks up the football crowd. But the service blended the efficient with the informal and two young birthday girls on an adjoining table were treated with very appropriate friendly seriousness. I was surprised to see a couple of reviews, on those websites which attract the disgruntled, single out the service for criticism.
Our experience was more than satisfactory on a reasonably busy midweek night. Certainly Banque seems to have won itself a loyal local following with couples, families, business types and social butterflies all in evidence and it blends the bar side of the business with the eating rather well.
Our table was well away from the bar braying in the back room, cheered by a real log fire. The drinking is well catered for with a respectable, if not outstanding wine list. I particularly enjoyed my Clearview Old Olive Block cabernet merlot and the Blackenbrook Nelson pinot noir went beautifully with the duck.
It's telling testimony that at the end of the evening I went out with a light heart to face the cone chicanes with which the road workers are making winter night driving such a joy in so many parts of Auckland.
