KEY POINTS:
HERALD ON SUNDAY RATING: * *
Pure Tastes
116 Marsden Rd, Paihia
Ph: 09 4020 003
www.puretastes.co.nz
Breakfast 7am-11am; lunch noon-3pm; dinner 6pm-10pm
Paihia just after New Year. The Blonde was in town on business, and I was tagging along in case any heavy lifting was required. Fortunately, nothing heavier than a glass of sauvignon blanc wanted lifting. All I had to do was make a booking in the best restaurant. Never mind that the name sounded more suitable for a deli. It was, I had been told, the only game in town.
Pure Tastes is part of the Paihia Beach Resort and Spa, a $500-anight beachfront accommodation, which, if you ask me, could do with an exterior scrub and a lick of paint. The restaurant, which seems tacked on as an afterthought, is under aluminium-framed canopies such as you find in corporate hospitality tents at sporting events.
To get to the dunny, you follow a circuitous route and find yourself in the back of the kitchen, pushing open a door off the pantry. I am not saying such adjacency is illegal - though I wonder whether it ought to be - or even insanitary, but it does seem far from completely couth. The presence of old soap wrappers and used tealight candles added little to the ambience.
But you only have to look at those prices to realise that this place is - to use a restaurant reviewer's technical term - flash.
We arrived precisely at the appointed time and a trifle peckish. I should have mentioned this to the waitress. If I had, perhaps she wouldn't have seated us and disappeared. For several minutes. We gazed longingly at the pile of menus on a sideboard and were just about to help ourselves when she returned, gave them out, told us the specials and vanished again. No water, no drinks orders, nothing. It was at least 10 minutes between when we arrived and when we were asked whether we wanted anything.
Now, I'm not one to make a fuss about poor service - God knows, I see so much of it - but I reckon that seven people who arrive for dinner at an upscale eatery when the diners at the other occupied tables are all in mid-meal deserve the initial attentions of at least two staff. There was not a moment in the evening that followed when we were attended to by more than one. Most of the service, which we often had to seek out by waving, was sullen, long-suffering or condescending. At a resort in a premier tourist location this is, at best, unfortunate.
After all that, the food was only rarely excellent.
Of the items on the tasting menu, only the scallops (served in a miso broth with green tea noodles) and a small fillet of fish encrusted with crushed macadamia and served with baked green tomatoes and chinese cabbage were particularly interesting.
Much of the rest was fussy and busy and far from consistent with the idea of pure tastes.
Elsewhere on the table, meats were reported as cooked more or less than desirable or requested.
There is no denying that the evening had its moments of gastronomic pleasure; so it should have at those prices.
But dining out is about more than the food.
We were left with the distinct impression that the restaurant was more important than its customers.
In a tourist resort - well, anywhere, actually - that's simply not good enough.
Wine list: Excellent, though few options by the glass.
Vegetarians: One entrée.
Watch out for: GST-exclusive prices.
Sound check: Conversation friendly.
Bottom line: Pricey, occasionally interesting food; snooty, slack service.
THE BILL
$650 for seven
Entrées $20-$22
Mains $31-$33
Sides $6.50
Desserts $14
Tasting menus $65-$75
- Detours, HoS
