Kim Knight rounds up the high points of her restaurant-reviewing year.
It was the year Simon Gault convinced the Viaduct's glitterati that a paper bag full of beef tendons was delicious, that gochujang became the new sriracha and carrot went the full kale. I ate and I ate and then I ate some more. Not everything was good, but some things were excellent.
Best new chip
Farewell polenta, I hardly knew thee. Korean rice stick cakes, aka tteokbokki, were everywhere this year. Get them in elegant rows from Han or (my pick) in a jumbled, gochujang'ed pile of pan-fried yum at Simon & Lee.
They're the size of small fence posts, individually wrapped in pancetta, deep-fried in duck fat and blobbed with smoked ricotta. 2017 was the year Simon Gault came back to the Viaduct and at Giraffe, his hot chip game was strong.
Pale, but very interesting
Winter at Madame George was potato with manchego cheese custard, salt-baked cabbage and cauliflower with a soft, soupy egg. Nutrition served snuggly and sumptuous.
When Japan met Peru ...
Azabu.
Where are we? What day is it? How did we get this ridiculously cool and attractive? Azabu, with its model good looks and Japanese-meets-Peruvian Nikkei food is transportative. Best dish: A tostada with seared beef, truffle sesame dressing, shiitake and pickled daikon.
... And Korea met Russia
I thoroughly recommend the private karaoke rooms for Bohemian Rhapsody with a side of debauchery and bad Bonnie Tyler, however, for a gastronomically good time, stay downstairs and order the cultural conundrum that is the kimchi and beef pelmini.
Fish of the day
Hugo's Bistro served just-cooked kingfish with chard, anchovies and olives and it was buttery, salty and ridiculously good.
Carb-loading
Tao.
The dumplings are great, but it was the deep-fried little mantou buns in the sizzling eye fillet in black pepper sauce that tipped Tao into my new meal-before-a-movie-in-Newmarket favourite. Imagine a reimagined steak sandwich.
Go to Kai Pasifika and get the Pua'a Samoa. It's boiled, then cold-smoked, then roasted to order and it melts in your mouth like a piece of Swiss chocolate might if it was made of pig.
When readers bite back
You can't please all of the people on Twitter all of the time. Rosie scored a solid eight for food (and nine for service) but: "What an awful review, slagged just about everyone and everything and judged her way to complete journalistic crap," wrote one man. "Far too much judgment on other diners if you ask me," wrote one woman. "Review of the year," wrote a reader who does not live in Parnell.
Speaking of Parnell ...
Did Ponsonby finally run out of room? All new restaurant roads are leading to the leafier suburb. Last year, Parnell scored Pasture (the city's most interesting and feted new restaurant) and this year it added a roster of solid, mid-range performers. I loved the piper fish and blackened broccoli at Gerome, a date night by the fire (literally) at Han and Asian Ruby is great for groups.
Winner winner, chicken dinner
Augustus Bistro.
Headquarters made headlines when owner Leo Molloy starting roasting his customers. Customers should stick to the chicken — succulently brined and expertly rotisseried. Surpassed only by the fresh shiitake mushrooms with the Bostwick bird at Augustus Bistro.
Free is good
The $55 price tag on the excellent 130-day grain-fed sirloin probably offsets the "free" amuse-bouche, but The Grill by Sean Connolly's complimentary baby Yorkshire pudding with salmon-spiked creme fraiche is a little bit of English roast-meets-Kiwi summer magic.
Almost free is also good
Almost everything at The Cult Project is good, but for less than the cost of a coffee (and definitely cheaper than an oyster) start with a plump, pickled $2.50 mussel.
There is so much to love about Javier Carmona's food, which popped up at Etxeberria in Avondale and now permanently resides at Inti in the CBD. He puts ants on watermelon radish and alpaca inside sandwiches. He deep-fries avocado leaves and manages to make lettuce intriguing. But if I had to pick one dish that blew my taste buds this year, it would be Inti's vanilla queso — sweet cream cheese topped with acidic pineapple buried under an icy slurry of lemon verbena and cucumber-infused granita.
Best servicepeople
Waiter? Steward? Attendant? I settled on the gender-neutral "waitperson", which prompted one reader to ask if that was somebody who served a "dineperson"? Fair enough. This year's perfect servicepeople (scoring 10 out of 10) were at The Cult Project, Han, The Grill by Sean Connolly and Ostro.
Substance and style
Beast & Butterflies.
The name is terrible and it's in a hotel, but Beast & Butterflies was the surprise find of the year — tasty, pretty food served with tasty, pretty cocktails in a tasteful, pretty space.
Second-time lucky?
Barcelona had been open only a couple of weeks when I gave it an averagely good review in 2016. A couple of months ago, I sat at a high table on my own dollar and ate seared baby cuttlefish that was so insanely flavoursome you'll wonder why we wasted a decade wading through bowls of flaccid salt and pepper squid masquerading as tapas at lesser establishments.
Best alternative protein
Huami.
One woman's tofu is another's cup of coagulated soy milk. If you're in the latter camp, put aside your prejudice and order the deep-fried home-made spinach egg tofu with oyster mushrooms at Huami. My favourite meat-free dish this year was comfort food in contemporary Chinese surroundings. (Honourable mention: the three-way tofu dolsot pot at Simon & Lee and the chilli-slaked edamame beans at Dr Rudi's).
No carrot was left undug
Madame George turned them into jerky. At Rosie they were "heritage" and came with picada yoghurt. thehalcyon.co.nzThe Halcyon braised them with butter, bay and chardonnay, The Cult Project put them on the barbecue and, at The Lula Inn, the menu promised 10-hour ember-roasted carrots with hazelnut romesco. 2017 was the Year of the Carrot.
Han Restaurant's "military stew" turned out to be slow-cooked oxtail, pops of sweet corn and little chewy plugs of sago, drowned in a chorizo broth. This Parnell newcomer is an elegant little restaurant and it would not have been proper to lick the plate, but I wanted to.
Parting is such sweet sorrow
In his decade on Dominion Rd, Michael Meredith has never stopped surprising. In September, he delivered the ultimate shock and announced he was closing Meredith's to move on to a new, unspecified food project. I ate there in April. The duck liver parfait in dark chocolate was a challenging start to a nine-course degustation and I didn't like it. I really enjoyed a bitter citrussed duck and an apple jelly wrapped kingfish, but perfection, for me, was a single Cloudy Bay clam served with foraged seaweed. When I was little, we collected cockles in the Marlborough Sounds. We'd put them in a bucket to purge their sandy guts and then we'd steam them open for tea. The very best food is a bridge.
