I mention them at length because I find it hard to think of anything else we ate there that deserves effusive praise, though our waiter was ubercool and suitably abashed when I mentioned that our salt and pepper grinders were empty and one of the two replacements delivered was, too.
We had dropped in for dinner in that delicious period between Christmas and New Year when Auckland briefly becomes a habitable city because half the population buggers off. As its full name suggests, Bedford is really a drinking establishment (the drinks list is a bigger document than the menu); if you want to eat here, you need to like meatballs.
The meatball features in pretty much any cuisine you care to name from Scandinavia to Vietnam but I always associate it with New York and the Italian-American classic spaghetti and meatballs.
Bedford's inspiration is pretty plainly from the Big Apple, too. Indeed its set-up is conspicuously similar to that of six-store New York chain The Meatball Shop, including the idea of multiple-choice menus. You choose your ball (beef, pork, chicken, veggie), sauce (tomato, parmesan, pesto, gravy) and your base (polenta, mash, risotto, spag) and tick your choices with a felt-tip pen on a laminated menu.
The Professor, who always knows best, didn't tick but rather coloured in the wee circle (neatly, of course) to vote for the veggie option. This she would soon regret.
The meat-free meatball - presumably involving some ground combination of pulse or beans - had that charmless, virtuous dryness I associate with the food at the grimmest of the anarchist collectives of my youth. The base of polenta (a substance the New World presumably inflicted on the Italians as payback for Catholicism) was like day-old wallpaper paste and the pesto sauce, which came in industrial quantities, overwhelmed everything.
I was much more impressed by a choice of spicy pork, though its gluggy and remarkably bland risotto base proved the axiom that starchy arborio does not tolerate sitting around, but must be finished to order. A side of "Caesar" salad was inadequately dressed and contained three croutons.
In essence this is something between fast food and bar food at eatery prices, though the place is stylish as hell and the sodas are great. Ponsonby Central remains a great destination, but this is not the pick of the bunch.
Verdict: More for drinking than eating out.
* Dishes $17; subs $14; sliders $5; salads $7; desserts $8
Cheers
Crystal ball gazing
It's time to polish the crystal ball and gaze into what this year will bring. I'm predicting the comeback of the wine that first swept me off my feet - chardonnay. Who could fail to love those hot buttered popcorn flavours of chardonnays back in the 1980s and 90s? My first taste of creamy chardonnay still lingers on my lips, as do the flavours of the wine I was head over heels about: Matua Valley Judd Estate Chardonnay. For a decade, chardonnay was bigger than Texas in New Zealand; there was more of it than sauvignon blanc, but these days it's been eclipsed by savvy and pinot noir, with pinot gris nipping at its heels.
The good news is, Kiwi chardonnays taste better than ever. They still have the buttery bells but the whistles are fresher flavours and wines that improve in the cellar for five to 10 years. Here's a bunch of the best.
• 2012 Giesen Fuder Clayvin Chardonnay
• 2013 Church Road Chardonnay
• 2012 Dog Point Chardonnay
• 2011 Greywacke Chardonnay
• 2012 Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay
• 2013 Neudorf Moutere Chardonnay
• 2013 Sacred Hill Virgin Chardonnay
• 2013 Te Kairanga John Martin Chardonnay
By Joelle Thomson, joellethomson.com
