KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * *
The Italians have a word for it: cuoco. Il patrono Gaetano Spinosa prefers to be known as a cook rather than a chef, which strikes me as the right attitude when you're offering authentic, traditional dishes.
Which is what he is doing at the restaurant he's opened with his Kiwi wife Leanne in the former funeral chapel, former Odeon Lounge on the Symonds St-Mt Eden Rd corner.
It's been nicely laid out in off-white walls and dark wooden furniture and linen tablecloths, candlesticks and solid silverware, in the traditional, authentic ristorante look. Music is contemporary rather than Renato Carosone, the 50s crooner whose hit song is the likely source of the new eatery's name.
The Italians have a couple of words for it: specialita' napoletane. Neapolitan cuisine, which doesn't mean tricolour icecream.
Spinosa's family has long been in the hospitality business. Expats know their restaurants in Milan, and yes, that is nowhere near Naples, but the life/love story is explained on the back of the menu. Much of what we consider "Italian cuisine" is Neapolitan cooking: most Italian emigrants came from the raffish, bayside city and the Campania countryside. When they opened restaurants in their new countries they naturally served the food they loved: lots of seafood, tomatoes and eggplants. Mozzarella. Spaghetti and pasta. Oh, and that thin-crust pie. The Italians have a word for it: pizza. Tony Soprano might demand meatballs but there's not a lot of red meat: it's too expensive. Not much poultry, either.
That seafood theme runs through Spinosa's tight menu. There are daily specials, explained the eager-to-please waitress in an authentic, traditional accent.
If the menu is compact, the wine list is positively intimate. Eight suggestions from the region. My companions, Jude and Anne, had begun with Campania Falanghina, a light and floral white, so at least two of us decided that we'd move on to a red. But of the three choices, two were still on their way from Italy. We were happy enough with a mid-price chianti.
Which brings us to the food, which is rather the point of a restaurant, whether it's traditional and authentic or not. Anne liked the look of seafood soup, then read the small print which said it must be ordered a day before and we didn't know that before we arrived.
Jude pointed out that when you boiled down the menu there weren't too many options - spaghetti with clams, macaroni with prawns, pasta with mussels - so we could order three or four flavours, put the plates in the middle, and cover most of the bases.
Sorry. I know reviewers love to dissect each dish and the cooking thereof. But I'm going to race through this meal. Because it was so disappointing. Calzone, deep-fried, crescent-shaped dough stuffed with cheese, was tasteless. No, not bland. Lamb ragu - the minced meat sauce often called, wrongly, bolognese - was tepid. No, just past cold. And its big pasta tubes were less al dente than rubbery.
Jude ordered gnocchi, which she's always wary of doing. She took a bite and found the word for it. I think it was "gluggy".
Desserts - lemon sorbet, affogato - were ordinary, which was an improvement.
So that was an evening of wine, women and song. The Italians have words for that, too: la dolce vita. Must look up "disappointing".
Address: 3-5 Mt Eden Rd, Eden Terrace
Phone: (09) 309 3740
Open: Lunch, dinner 6 days (closed Mon)
Cuisine: Italian
From the menu: Seafood spaghetti with focaccia pizza topping $30; Crumbed, pan-fried scaloppine medallion $22; Affogato (vanilla ice-cream drowned in coffee) $8
Vegetarian: Not on menu
Wine: Eight regional specialities
