Paramount Restaurant & Bar

By EWAN McDONALD for viva

"And for my main I'll have one green lettuce leaf and a glass of water. Not fizzy, please, the bubbles are fattening." That's how you expect the fashionisti to eat. No one is surprised that the Fashion Cafe chain, which used the names and other features of Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Elle Macpherson to blend couture and cuisine, went bust.

Probably, too, why it's hard to get a bite on any of the world's chic streets. Florence mourns a favourite cafe on Via Tornabuoni; a bustling coffee shop becoming another designer clothing store. If you're peckish in Milan, don't wander Via Montenapoleone or Via della Spiga: Domenico and Stefano nip down to Kisho for sushi while Donatella slips her VIP guests into discreet, wood-panelled Bice for traditional Tuscan-Milanese dishes after her shows. Both are off the main drag.

In Paris, of course, they can do it, because they can do anything in Paris. The Pourcel twins, 36-year-old Jacques and Laurent, of the youngest generation of Michelin three-star chefs, parade their modern cuisine at Maison Blanche, beside temples of other tastes on the Avenue de Montaigne.

Our fashion alley, High St, is short of quality dining after hours. Cross into Lorne St and the search is over.
Ebullient host Sean Smith and, in the kitchen, Sugar Club refugee Alistair Parker, created one of Auckland's best restaurants at Paramount, an elegant, urban room with Pacific Rim cuisine. Rim? Sometimes he took the style over the edge.

Earlier this year Emma and Trevor Griggs quit the starched linen tablecloths of Mange Tout, their Ponsonby Rd villa, and took over the inner-city fine-dining room. Trevor, who has cooked in Australia and London, with Emma managing restaurants, prefers a classic style. His dishes are modern presentations of traditional combinations, the complex but not complicated flavours and inspired matches taking the food far from the familiar.

By the time you get to "Two short blacks and the bill, please," it's obvious that the names above the door might have changed, the taste might have changed, but Paramount fully deserves its place at the top table of the city's restaurants.

Trevor Griggs has constructed one of the few menus where you run an eye down the courses and think, "I'd be happy with anything here". More than happy, in fact, with an eggplant trio ($15) that toured several Mediterranean coastlines to pick up garlic and feta and spices; and slices of rabbit loin ($16.50), married with wilted spinach and set off with a tasty field mushroom muffin.

Our mains continued that modern/traditional theme. The lamb loin ($28.90) was just past pink with crisp potato rosti, peppered pumpkin, rosemary "jam" and port wine sauce lapping at the sides. The evening's special was a pork fillet ($29), cooked to tender and slightly rosy perfection, sliced and served with crunchy beans, button mushrooms and finely sliced savoy cabbage and creamy potato infused with rosemary.

We'd chosen a Hawkes Bay merlot-cabernet from a winery we'd not stumbled across before, Bilancia of Gimblett Rd ($56), a berry-redolent Italian-style which was pitched just right for all four courses.

Beneath its contemporary presentation, one dessert evoked childhood memories - sweet, thick rhubarb and toffee-apple creme brulee with an oatmeal crumble ($11.50) - and the other took us back to France, honey nougat parfait in a tuille spiral ($12).

On a quiet midweek night (warning, bookings pick up after Labour Weekend) service was assured, informed, attentive but not intrusive, and we left, thinking: "How sad for those who can't or won't or don't tuck lustily into food such as this - guilt-free."

Open: Lunch Monday-Friday, dinner Monday-Saturday.

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