At Itameshi, the mentaiko pasta is rich in every sense of the word. Photo / Kim Knight
Under the Crimes Act, it is illegal to record a conversation without the knowledge of at least one participant in that conversation.
I’m thinking about this as I sample a forkful of Japanese curry-flavoured tomato beef cheek ragu with spiced cheese on pasta.
Sushi in Italy? Sure. Spaghetti in Japan? Definitely. A third-party facilitated mash-up of the world’s greatest cuisines? Call the culinary police.
According to Google, “itameshi” directly translates to “stir-fried”. According to Wikipedia, the same word describes a particular style of fusion cooking that began with the introduction of pasta to Japanese cafes in the 1920s. In Auckland, it’s a new restaurant that both delights and dismays.
Itameshi occupies a street-level space in Ponsonby’s Cider Building. The Williamson Avenue development includes a supermarket, a media company and an international pizza chain. Its non-descript glass frontage and proximity to an elevator lobby must have made for a tough design proposition. Full credit to Mille, the company that transformed what could have just as easily been an optometrist’s waiting room into a restaurant plush enough to warrant a scampi and caviar-spiked menu.
Here’s the thing, though. If you’ve invested in leather banquettes and marble-topped bars, then why present that menu on a piece of laminated A4? You might get away with it at brunch, but a $38 lobster bisque housemade pasta with butter prawns and masago deserves better.
Our journey from Japan to Italy actually began with a clever Middle Eastern detour. Crispy, crumbly deep-fried falafel are usually made with chickpeas. Itameshi’s $14 edamame version was a lovely take on the theme - lighter than its traditional namesake, far fancier than a pile of steamed soybeans. Food cultures had collided and zero damage was sustained.
The Unofficial Auckland Restaurant Handbook decrees all new menus must reinvent raw fish. Itameshi’s $28 contribution to this conversation is “Sicilian sashimi”, in which chunks of kingfish are blobbed with an orange gel, whole shiso leaves and crunchy discs of radish. I’m not convinced it’s the holy gravlax grail the city has been missing, but we scoffed the lot.
I thoroughly recommend the $21 miso-roasted eggplant served on gnocco fritto, AKA deep-fried pastry. Eat fast - the aubergine is a deliciously weighty mess - and try to get a bit of everything in your mouth at once. Salami, whipped yoghurt and honey turn this into a sublime appetiser; a mini-pizza that still leaves stomach room for pasta.
The menu offers four pastas and three additional “main” dishes, priced from $29-49, with descriptors that range from the bog-standard (osso bucco with gremolata and creamy mash) to that confounding curried ragu.
Japanese curry is itself a fusion food. The thick, hot gravy tastes like something my British grandfather would have enjoyed. It works well with rice and exceptionally well with crumbed pork schnitzel and rice. Now, imagine the bolognese sauce you made in your first flat. The recipe calls for a tablespoon of mixed herbs but, instead, you reach for the little cardboard packet of curry powder...
You be the judge. Sincerely. Order the curry pasta and feel free to tell me you loved it because taste is subjective and the point of a restaurant like this is, surely, to order beyond pork katsu and/or a ribeye steak with a $13 side of mashed spud?
Recently, we had visitors from Sardinia. They arrived bearing bottargo and commandeered the kitchen. Lunch was nothing more than salted, dried mullet roe, grated and swirled with exactly the correct thickness of pasta, a glug of good olive oil and a spoonful of pasta water. It was the single best expression of Italy I’ve eaten in my life - and also an exercise in biting my tongue. Because a tiny, greedy part of me really wanted to ask: How would that taste with a little dairy fat?
Enter Itemashi’s mentaiko. It combined thin ribbons of pasta with the fishy scrapings of a spice-cured pollack roe sac and a dashi-butter sauce. I was expecting slightly more heat from the cured roe (known in Japan as “mentaiko”), but if you like your kaimoana to remind you of rockpools under a sultry sun, this is the dish for you.
I wish I could stop there. I wish the kitchen had stopped there.
In Japan, mentaiko pasta is often topped with shredded nori. At Itemashi, it came with caviar (of an unspecified origin) - and gold leaf.
Italian and Japanese food is lauded for its simplicity. A single perfect tomato with just picked basil. A sliver of the freshest fish with the best-quality soy. These cuisines do not need gold leaf - and neither does a restaurant with a laminated paper menu.
Itemashi has a lot going for it. Its staff are willing and helpful (I didn’t like my prosecco, and when I asked to swap for a beer, they knocked the wine off the bill) and there are some good ideas on the menu (the matcha tiramisu almost convinced me I might like green tea; the adzuki bean cream and chocolate chip cannoli filling was a dream). But it might also consider that less is more - that when you’re taking a leaf from the Japanese and Italian books, that leaf does not have to be gold.
Itameshi, 4 Williamson Avenue (Cider Building), Ponsonby, Auckland. We spent: $244.11 for two (including two beers and a 300ml serve of sake at $42).
Kim Knight has been a restaurant critic for the Weekend Herald’s Canvas magazine since 2016. She holds a master’s degree in gastronomy and in 2023 was named one of New Zealand’s top 50 most influential and inspiring women in food and drink.
by Yvonne Lorkin
When Kim mentioned she’d been to a Japanese-Italian restaurant, I was like, “Pardon?” And then she said, “I had to send back the prosecco.” I said, “I don’t think I’ve ever sent back a glass of prosecco.” She was like, “Yeah, it didn’t taste great” and I was like, “Okay, but what was the rest of the drinks list like?” And she said, “They served my sake in a wine glass.” And part of my brain collapsed.
Checking out the drinks list myself a short time later, I was intrigued to see a cocktail called “Hang To Drown” which, despite conjuring up all sorts of water torture thoughts, ended up being a delicious blend of bacardi, vodka, lime juice, butterfly pea flower water and lemon. And the much more pleasant sounding Innamorarsi (Italian for “love at first sight”) featuring gin, lemon, rose syrup and grenadine will definitely bring the grins. There are five sakes to choose from from Takara and Asahi in 300ml pours and they’re pretty decent quality, nothing eye-popping.
But what did make my pupils bulge was that for a restaurant that’s half Italian, the only prosecco they’re offering by the glass is from … Australia. And no Italian rosé? While they do have two (only two, mind you) very delicious Italian white wines on the list (Ciello’s Cattaratto and da Vulcano’s Fiano Benevantano) — not one of them is available by the glass. And of the four Italian reds on the list, just one, (the Poggio Anima Sangiovese), can be bought by the glass.
I’m no expert, but were I wanting to champion Italian flavours, I’d maybe feature more Italian wines on my list. And I’d have more of them available by the glass to encourage people to try them! Just a thought.
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