Mint overdoes the service, and the menu is safe rather than inspiring. Photo / Doug Sherring
Rating: * *
Where:174 Hurstmere Rd, Takapuna
Ph: (09) 489 4727
Wine list:Adequate, though hardly imaginative.
Vegetarians:A few choices.
Watch out for: The swooping staff.
Bottom line: Shore thing.
'Moment' is the word of the moment. At Kermadec, they have a tasting menu called "Idea of the Moment", which is wonderful, but the name makes it sound as though they made it up on the spot from whatever they found in the fridge.
Mint in Takapuna takes it one
step further, including the "fish of the moment" in their menu, which is just silly. Is it meant to be fresher than "fish of the day"? I really would like to know.
Mint (on the menu and the bill, it's Mint O'Takapuna, but it's about as Irish as sushi) is in that unlovely Hurstmere Rd strip where most places are for drinking rather than eating. With the exception of the sweet little bistro called Wine and Roses, I can't remember having had a decent meal there. But this job is the weekly triumph of hope over experience, so I instructed the Professor to aim the Corolla north.
A reviewer who visited just after Mint took on its new identity in 2005, wrote that those who remembered it as Paper Moon would find "nothing to unnerve them". He meant by this that not much had changed - which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether you liked Paper Moon, I suppose. But it's a long time since I have been so unnerved at a restaurant.
Scarcely a minute passed without one of the staff appearing at one of our elbows to ask whether they could take our food order or get us another glass of something or other. Each time we would explain that the order had just been taken or that we would let them know if the thirst got too much and would be warmly informed that this was "awesome". But only a very few moments would pass before a fresh-faced fresh face would appear wondering whether "you guys" were ready to order.
At the same time someone might approach from the other side offering to remove a half-full wine glass and replace it with a full one. My protests that I hadn't finished the half-full one yet seemed to fall on deaf ears because this exchange was repeated a few moments later. At one point I was engaged in something like a tug-of-war with about 100ml of Astrolabe sauvignon blanc which is a distinctly unnerving experience, let me tell you.
The menu (which is hard to read because the print is so small) is on thick card and plainly designed to last, although my dog-eared one suggested it had been around a while. I'm not sure that the menu changes by the moment here. It may be designed not to unnerve the chef.
Certainly there is nothing to unnerve diners. Nor to inspire them. To say that the salads of lamb and beef were very accurately named is about as effusive as I can be. The laksa was as good as that at most Asian takeaways. The base of a pizza Margherita (touchingly called "margarita" on the menu) was spongy and sconelike and the fish (of the moment, of course) had been left several moments too long on the heat. It was, in short, neither very good, nor very bad. That's not what my kids used to mean when, as teenagers, they called something "mint".
