Restaurant review: Venosa, Kingsland

The eggplant dish at Venosa. Photo / Babiche Martens

Address: 480 New North Rd, Kingsland
Phone: (09) 815 6644
Facebook: KingslandMMXV
Cost: Dishes $14.90 to $27.50; desserts $12.90

No doubt Dave Perillo wanted "venosa" rather than "KingslandMMXV" for his Facebook moniker, but it was already taken by a young woman called Terry who lives in Milan but was born in the south of Italy.

Perillo named his place after his father's hometown in Basilicata (in the boot's pronounced high arch), a little-travelled part of the country that Dave calls "the wild back of beyond". The family was part of the big influx of Italians after the war: Dave's Dad married a Kiwi girl and luckily for Dave, who was born here, she liked Italian food, though he reckons he got his birthright entitlement of lamb chops and mashed spud.

Now, here he is, squeezing between the tables and checking diners are happy at his tiny Kingsland restaurant, a room so small that when they need more wine from the back room, the waitress goes out the front door and down the side to fetch it. It's small enough to be buzzing any time it's open but he's happy to take bookings ("I'm not going to turn business away," he says; it's a policy that more than a few up-themselves Auckland eateries would do well to emulate).

Perillo was the co-founder of the Corner Store at the top of Mt Eden Rd but a home-style Italian place is something he says he's been thinking and talking about for 30 years.

If that's true, it's been worth the wait. Venosa is the kind of place you remember stumbling into in some back street in Italy and being certain you'd never find that magic again, much less on the other side of the world. The food is unpretentious though far from unrefined; simple though far from plain. In a city where it sometimes seems every place is straining for effect, Venosa makes everything look effortless.

The tucker, which Perillo says is "the stuff I grew up eating", is prepared by chefs far too young to be as good as they are: Harry McAlister, who did his time at Cibo, and Rowan Maissin. I kept sneaking glances at the kitchen, expecting them to be joined by a burly Italian for whom they were kitchenhands, but no one else ever showed.

The menu, which plainly changes regularly, listed nothing to surprise, but there was plenty to delight in what came out of the kitchen. Double-crumbed fried eggplant avoided, probably by being finished in the oven, the oily horrors that dish can become. Topped with rocket pesto and half-melted buffalo mozzarella, it was a sensation. With some reluctance, I had passed on the bruschetta, because the Professor said she wanted to save room for dessert and we turned our attention to the mains.

Venosa in Kingsland. Photo / Babiche Martens

Most were pasta, or what the Italians call primi piatti (first plates). I was much tempted by a spaghetti pomodoro, the classic tomato, since it would have been such a good test of the kitchen's command of the basics, but finally caved in to the luxe option, a sensationally garlicky fettuccine carbonara smothered in parmesan and piled on a raw egg yolk, which you get to mix in yourself. Across the table the seafood dish of the day consisted of pillow-soft gnocchi with cockles and prawns and lotsa fishy stuff. The kitchen gave a rip-roaring good account of panna cotta and tiramisu as well.

More po-faced reviewers than I save five stars for Noma and the French Laundry, but I ask myself what a place is trying to do and whether it could be done better: as a homely, neighbourhood Italian joint with sensational food, this is certainly a five-star experience.