Chef Sid Sahrawat in the new expanded area of his restaurant Sidart in Ponsonby. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Sid Sahrawat's eponymous fine-dining restaurant has doubled in size. You go in the old door, to the right at the top of the stairs and, if you end up in the new part (the north wing, perhaps?), you come out another door to go to the impeccably appointed loos.
When you do so, you realise that between the two, and taking up some of the space the restaurant might otherwise have colonised, is a room labelled a yoga studio, which is barely larger than a campervan. The Professor was worried about how they held classes in there. Would participants take it in turns to do the downward dog? Do you have to be proficient enough to roll up like a hedgehog before they let you in?
It was a trompe l'oeil puzzle that called for lateral - well, vertical, actually - thinking. Our waitress explained that the little room accommodates only a staircase, which leads to the studio above. I pictured a stairway to heaven but realised we'd already ascended that and taken our seats at a table in the corner.
I've never actually met Sahrawat - we exchanged eyebrow lifts across a crowded room at his fine-dining Indian peasant-food place Cassia once, as I was paying the bill - but he's done such a good job of cooking my dinner that I regard him with the affection one feels for an old friend.
I had two reasons for a return visit to Sidart, where I hadn't been for four years: the place has been refurbished and expanded and, more important, the Professor deserved it.
Regular readers will know that she endures some pretty poor meals at my insistence. Worse, she has to put up with people who meet her and say, "The Professor, I assume." (I don't really feel that sorry about the latter, because it makes up for the times we are in contexts where she is being professorial and people say to me: " ... and you are?") But I owed her a decent meal and Sidart, for the last review of the year, seemed like the just the ticket.
They've called the extension the Alhambra Room in homage to the fabled bar that once occupied it. It's hard to fault the fitout, which is dark and coolly restrained and includes elements of the original honeycomb logo, though I couldn't help feeling that the place had suffered slightly as a result of its growth. Busy and crowded, it seemed less intimate and the excellent service team (led by the serene and personable Judika Ramachand) were a bit stretched. So was the kitchen: long pauses between courses, at first an opportunity for meditation, became a source of mild annoyance.
Sidart and Merediths are (I think) the only restaurants in Auckland that offer prix fixe (aka degustation) menus only, which is to say there is no a la carte. (The Grove, of which both Michael Meredith and Sahrawat are alumni, is prix fixe by design, but offers a la carte "on request", which sort of means they'd rather you didn't.)
I like this kind of eating, because you know it means virtually no waste in the kitchen and because you don't know what you're going to get until you've got it. It's a bit of a challenge for a reviewer, since the waiters' tableside descriptions are a blizzard of explanation, and I've never been one for blow-by-blow description, since I think it's as much use as a tissue-paper umbrella.
But the meal delivered in the nine-course Discovery Menu showcased Sahrawat's capacity for inventiveness that never strays into showy pretension. It starts with four amuse-bouches (I recently saw these called "koha", which was a nice touch) that would have passed muster as entrees: a bowl of shiitake broth enlivened with lime stood out, as did miniature cigars of Comte cheese dusted with sumac.
Elsewhere, sweetcorn was given a trio of treatments of strikingly different textures; scallops were served sashimi-style (a new experience for me) with shavings of pickled celeriac; slabs of quail came with date; a cube of perfect eye fillet (slow-cooked sous vide, I suspect) had a tiny cannelloni-like tube oozing a foie gras cream.
Plainly, at the price, this is occasion dining, but even if you have nothing to celebrate, it's worth the effort. If it isn't an occasion when you arrive, it soon will be.
Degustation $135 a head (wine matches $90); Tuesdays $80 ($80).
VERDICT: Bigger is not necessarily better, but it's still one of the best