Rating: 6/10
Address: 50 High St, Level One
Phone: 09 302 2303
Website: vivacerestaurant.co.nz
Cuisine: Italian/Spanish-influence modern cuisine
Drinks: Licensed
Walking up the well-trodden stairs to Vivace, I remember skidding on the wooden floor a few years back after a too-long office lunch. My memories of the place go back even further, to its original more intimate incarnation further down High St, overlooking Vulcan Lane.
For a couple of decades now Vivace has been part of the Auckland dining out landscape, offering slick service, a good wine list and a menu that is longer on options than adventure. My last visit was for a well-catered private function six or so months ago.
When a friend suggested we give Vivace a go for a catch-up lunch I was interested to check out if I'd wrongly let the place slip from my radar. When I mentioned I was lunching there, it prompted talk in the Viva office about it being time to revisit the place review-wise and so I find myself making two trips within a week.
The first is unofficial and it's obvious that the work crowd is still out in force. My friend and I arrive early and so snaffle a balcony table. This is easily the pick of places for two, in what is a big, bustling restaurant, essentially a wooden barn, but cleverly divided with a central kitchen and servery backed by a bar.
We share a tasty tapas serving of goats cheese balls with a miserly pouring of honey, before opting for small-sized mains, a lamb salad for her and a prawn risotto for me. Neither of us gets what we ordered, but we're relaxed and the mistake quickly rectified.
More grating though are three "how are your meals" visits from our overly perky waitress. We gave the standard non-commital Kiwi "fine, thanks" for a heat-and-eat risotto and a tartly dressed, but nicely presented, lamb fillet and kumara salad.
For a pleasant hour it was an OK exchange and Vivace underlined that service screw-ups aren't the norm by quick and efficient bill splitting.
Returning for a Saturday evening dinner, I was again struck by how busy the place was, but then central Auckland is short of options for bigger groups and with its extensive menu Vivace caters for all budgets. Mains are priced from $28 to $34, but there's salads, risotto and pasta in the $18-$25 range, plus tapas from $7 to $13.
The wine list no doubt appeals to the corporate crowd, being strong on New Zealand whites and with a varied international selection of reds, but it's approachable, with good options by the glass from $8 up.
We're surrounded by a diverse bunch of diners, including a group of young things tucking into tasty looking pizzettes. On the way home, my husband and I reckon that shared, casual meals are clearly Vivace's strength and that we won't be rushing back as a twosome.
We'd started our meal with a couple of the good-sized tapas. The juicy scallops arrived sizzling on a hot plate, but I could barely taste the lime, coriander and chilli flavouring. I'd also like to have known that the mound of squid with citrus aioli on the side came battered, especially as this was more heavily coated than I enjoy.
My main was a hearty cannelloni with braised lamb in a somewhat salty tomato ragout, with a shared side of crisp green beans. My husband's Scotch fillet arrived tending more medium than medium rare and a small accompanying potato cake was on the chewy side of crispy. The hotel-style decorative touches, battered onion rings and a stuffed roasted tomato with what looked like creamy pesto, but was actually a tasty aubergine puree, were, he noted, the only things that made our mains much different from something served at home.
Therein lies the problem, tasty enough, generally well cooked and of good quality ingredients, but nothing out of the ordinary.
The dessert menu is a case in point, with oh-so standard offerings: sticking date pudding, cheesecake, chocolate tart, ice-cream, etc. We ended up with a mini pavlova, big enough to share and circled in passionfruit syrup. How about something from the Italian or Spanish influences Vivace cites, rather than the international conveyor belt of sweet selections?
All up $130 with two drinks apiece.
While waiting in the queue to use the women's toilets - two are clearly not enough for a place this size - I can't help but notice that the exterior door is crying out for a lick of paint.
In between a repeated, polite sardine shuffle of waiting women every time a cubicle door opens or shuts, I spot a poster on the wall for a Tuscan lunch with a guest chef.
The date - 2003 - sums up a bit too neatly for me where Vivace is at in 2010.
From the menu: Goats cheese & mozzarella balls on rocket with honey $13, chorizo pizzette $19, kumara gnocchi with herbed chicken in a creamy tomato sauce $16/$21, venison denver leg with roast potatoes, aubergine puree, oven-dried tomato, watercress, lemon and a pinot noir jus $34.
