Herald rating: * * *
Address: 19 Davis Cres, Newmarket
Phone: (09) 524 8997
Web: www.marketkitchenandbar.co.nz
Open: Dinner Tue-Sat, brunch and lunch 7 days
Cuisine: Bistro
From the menu: Smoked salmon cannelloni, avocado salsa, watercress, lemon shallot dressing $17; sous-vide fillet of market fish, sauteed potatoes, caponata dressing, tempura courgette flower $29.50; coffee and vanilla bean panna cotta, blueberry jelly, citrus caramel, almond tuile $14
Vegetarian: Choice on menu
Wine: Good but you'll pay
KEY POINTS:
Another week, another new bistro. Oh, you're thinking, all very well for him to come over all world-weary, he eats out every week on the Viva Visa, if we want to go to a restaurant we've got to plan a night when he's not at touch and I'm not at yoga, or I'm not working late and he's looking after the baby, can we find a babysitter, it's all too hard so let's get takeaways and a DVD. Is PS: I Love You out yet?
Or you could read that sentence again and think, as I so often do, oh joy! Another new place to eat! And a little frisson, perhaps even a grillade, of anticipation lifts the spirit!
Thus enlivened, I rang Jude to see if she was free for dinner. "Oh," she said. "Wonder what this one will do with pork belly."
Market, or to give it the full moniker, Market Kitchen and Bar, is in Newmarket. It used to be the Olympic Cafe and was among the first and best neighbourly bistros in then-newly gentrified suburbs. But you don't come here to read ancient history.
Alastair Bryan and Matthew McAlpine acquired the premises, several cans of chocolate brown paint, quite a bit of dark-wood panelling, and refurbished. They opened Market at the beginning of the month.
McAlpine's Dejeuner served the finest dinners in Palmerston North for 20 years and won Manawatu's best restaurant award two or three years running around 01-03 (no sniggering in Ponsonby, please). He moved to Wellington before Bryan returned from overseas and the pair launched this first Auckland venture.
As we arrive the last after-work drinkers are patting their pockets for the Beemer keys and slightly older apartment-dwellers want tables for four or six.
We're assessing seven entrees and six mains (pork belly is braised with apples and served with a white bean puree, Savoy cabbage, apple and watercress salad) when Mine Host enters, stage left.
He drops to one knee, gazes into Jude's eyes and begins, "Chef has sourced some quite exciting ..." It's a table-waiting style that neither of us have seen since, oh, Palmerston North in the 80s. Besides, Chef getting quite excited about something in an Auckland bistro these days probably means that the sales rep slung a few freebies to get a new customer and someone in the kitchen logged on to easyrecipes.com and searched pork belly. Call me world-weary.
Jude began with terrine, coarse pork and pistachio wrapped in speck, with piccalilli and rocquette, which is a flash way of spelling rocket. It wasn't coarse; neither was it particularly fine, at least not by the Engine Room's standards, which is how Jude judges terrines. It didn't come with bread, standard practice for most, until our host noticed and brought some brioche, which added an interesting sugar factor.
Tortellini of confit rabbit, pea puree, red chard, crisp Parma ham. Inverted descriptions abhor I. Can't they write slow-cooked rabbit tortellini? The rabbit was rich, strongly gravy'd, but the pasta was flabby, overdone, and the puree watery.
Our mains were more successful. Chef had sourced something interesting for his chicken dish: breast meat poached then roasted, stuffed with mushrooms and dates and rolled into a roulade. Tasty, but the trimmings - herb polenta, parsnip chips and passing greens - seemed fiddly and dated.
Chef danced a duet with lamb, too. The chump was roasted in honey, the shoulder slow-cooked, served with - another recurring theme - kumara puree. Why? Are potatoes gastropolitically incorrect? The sweet-sour balance tilted towards sweet, even with a snowpea, Vietnamese mint and rocquette salad.
Dessert was less than memorable, and may or may not have been made on the premises. The best touch came from the bar manager when he dropped by. I mentioned that Jude found the Joseph Drouhin Laforet 05 pinot noir that I'd ordered a trifle dry. "I'm more into cocktails than wine," he fessed up, "but I'll see what I can do", and came back in a couple of minutes with a lighter Mt Difficulty Roaring Meg 06. There's a careful wine list here but prices are well into the northern slopes.
Another week, another meal. Jude has adopted a stringent criteria when we assess the week's work. It is: would we want to go back and eat there again, or would we rather go somewhere else? I leave you to decide whether these little piggies will go to Market.
