KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * * * 1/2
"Why are we here?" asked Emma as she kicked back in one of Ima's 80s-style office chairs. Made over in stylish green vinyl, they are.
There are two ways to answer that question. Socrates, Descartes, Hegel and Richard Dawkins have taken decades over the first option and not resolved it satisfactorily, so there was no way I'd manage it in a lunchtime. I pressed Option 2.
"Because it's The Lady Editor's favourite lunch place and she insisted we try it."
Emma eyed a steak sandwich. "I thought The Lady Editor was ... "
"She is," I said. "She comes here every day for the citrus cheese blintz. Swears it's vegan."
Please let me announce my prejudice: I like Ima. It is very likely the perfect ... well, explaining exactly what Ima is will give some idea of its charms.
The name means "Mother" in Hebrew and it grew out of Yael Shochat's City Lunch Box, near the top of Shortland St. In that former life, the Israeli chef-owner made gourmet sandwiches, kebabs, Tunisian salads, organic potato salad and more for CBD offices. Now Mama's kitchen is a daytime cafe, evening restaurant.
The room is unpretentious: those chairs, bare wood-top tables on pipes, paint-peeling walls. It's a place where suited lawyers, bike couriers, ladies who lunch in extremely expensive outfits from the Chancery down the road, desk jockeys and students feel at ease.
And that fits the food, too. Shochat calls it "cuisine of the sun", a tag-line that Provence has mortgaged over decades. It fits her small, Med-spread menu of falafel, Lebanese grills, salads claiming Cypriot, Caesar and Nicoise heritage.
"I fancy a burger," said Emma. "I haven't had one for years." Shochat's take on the Big Mac char-grills a medallion of good Angus beef, on a grain-rich bun, served not with fries but amusing shoestrings of roasted root veges. The Lady Editor would have hated it: Emma was happy at the substantial offering, glad, too, that she'd ordered the ketchup and aioli on the side so she could dispense them to whim.
"Shakshuka" is such a glorious word that I had to order the dish just to say it out loud. Etymologically inclined readers may know that it is an onomatopoeic Hebrew and North African phrase meaning "all mixed up".
It's also the most popular egg dish in Israel: poached eggs, quarters of slow-roasted tomatoes, fingers of spicy Moroccan merguez sausages. Prick the eggs and make a glorious red and golden and taste-exploding mess. Slurp it up. Wear a napkin, especially if you're going back to the office.
Service is friendly, relaxed. So friendly, relaxed that when the waiter spills coffee in my lap, blushes and says, "That's the first time I've ever done that. I guess it had to happen sometime," I can only laugh and sympathise. She took them off the bill.
And there is another Ima. From Thursday to Saturday evenings, when the suits and the LWL steer their SUVs to the sanctuary of the suburbs, it becomes a neighbourhood cafe, a wine bar with quite a few bottles you won't find elsewhere. A local for those in the heart of the inner city.
It is very likely perfect.
Address: 67 Shortland St, CBD
Phone: (09) 373 3787
Web: www.imacuisine.co.nz (not up yet)
Open: Breakfast, lunch 7 days, dinner Thurs-Sat
Cuisine: Med
From the menu: Middle Eastern eggs, poached on spinach with sumac $12.50; Lemon and garlic roasted chicken, mash, courgettes $21.50; Hazelnut affogato $5
Vegetarian: Equal rights
