Address: 425 Mt Eden Rd, Mt Eden
Phone: (09) 630 1588
Website: themulberry.co.nz
Rating: 4/5
One way of classifying restaurants is by the terminology that the people who wait tables - why is there no gender-neutral term that does not grate? - use to introduce the specials.
The standard approach is "the specials tonight are..." followed by a list. A bit fancier is "we have..."; posher still is "chef has..."; and the supreme is "I have...".
This last form has its roots in the practice in some French restaurants whereby the waiters (never waitresses) - hardened pros and hard-headed businessmen - rent a sector from the establishment, where they in effect on-sell the meals that they have bought from the kitchen.
At The Mulberry they don't strain for that effect. Our waiter, who turned out to be a decently informed sommelier, employed the phraseology "chef has...". Fair enough: it underlines the fact that this is a place that takes food seriously - and serves seriously good food.
I have never much liked the terms "gastropub" and "gastrobar": because of the way the stress falls, the words more readily recall "gastroenteritis" than "gastronomy". Anyway in my experience they are a bit of a con, a way of charging you big bucks for bangers and mash.
The Mulberry, less jarringly, styles itself a "gastro-style bar and restaurant", which emphasises its dual nature: a handsomely dim neighbourhood boozer below (with a good-looking "tastes" menu) and a fancier dining room upstairs.
It was to the latter that a friend and I directed our footsteps. The Professor had abandoned me to go and do professorial things at a library in Sydney, so I dragged one of my more critical foodie mates away from the fireside.
The room's fitout, a coffee-rich blend of browns, offered an ideal welcome on a viciously rain-lashed Queen's Birthday evening. So did the waiter, whose style was just precise enough to lend a sense of occasion but not so formal as to put everyone on edge.
The kitchen here is under the direction of Sal Grant, who has presided at Toto and Mikano, and who blew my socks off at the reinvented VBG in Parnell in 2008. He wasn't in attendance on the night in question but _ take a bow, Charles Berghan - good grub was.
My foodie mate wasn't putting the kitchen under pressure, ordering six Bluff oysters; I had my eye on the tiger prawns, which were fat and juicy and artfully arranged atop a blossom of tiny cos lettuce leaves and marooned in a small sea of delicate, thin gazpacho (a cold tomato soup of Spanish origin).
I graduated to a small lamb rump, perfectly pink, which came with a rich but delicate potato gratin and a jus of prunes (including the prunes themselves, a fine match). A side of beans and roasted beetroot was inspired.
Across the table, my pal had been much taken by the idea of a coconut-spiced half roast chicken, but although the accompaniment - the big-beaded Israeli couscous; yoghurt; zucchini - was terrific, the bird itself (I checked) was rubbery and dry. The waiter reported this to the kitchen and it was uncomplainingly removed from the bill.
Such professionalism (a questionable glass of wine was also unhesitatingly replaced) is regrettably rare, but at this place they take diners' concerns in their stride. Good food, good service and no public holiday surcharge: what more can you ask for?
Ambience: Warm and snug
Vegetarians: Two entrees, presumably upsizeable
Watch out for: Beans and beetroot
Bottom line: A class act by any standards
THE BILL: $186 for two
Oysters $20
Prawns $19
Lamb $33
Chicken $32*
Desserts (2) $27
Side $8.50
Wine (three glasses) $32
*not charged for
