Sage, Mission Bay

Seafood Tortelloni with a Lemon Beurre Blanc sauce at Sage, in Mission Bay. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Herald rating: ****

What a nice menu. We like a menu that ends with tiramisu or pannacotta. The waitress brought the menus back but we said we already knew what we were having for pud and she said, let me guess, tiramisu.

On her birthday, she said, she was given a whole tiramisu to take home to share with her family. That's a nice thing to do for your staff, and they certainly seem happy to be working at Sage, which has been open since the end of August.

We went on a Wednesday night and the place was half empty, or half full, depending on how you see these things.

Sage is no bad place to go when you're feeling out of sorts. It has a good plain name that suggests something fragrant, and something wise. Sage is a sturdy sort of herb, much-loved but better under-used.

It suggests restraint. As does this place.

There is nothing memorable about the room. There are wooden folding doors, plain tables, some rather odd paintings and a yucca plant. But it is all perfectly clean and this is Mission Bay: you wouldn't want to frighten the punters.

If the room is a tad less than assured, the menu is perfectly so. Discounting the two wheat and gluten-free pasta dishes, which I most certainly did, there are around 18 choices, from bread to pud. If I'm going to eat pasta with gorgonzola and cream, I'm going to eat it with what God meant it to be eaten with: not namby-pamby rice flour pasta.

So this is easy. The bloke had a platter with smoked meats, a tiny pile of grilled courgettes, an artichoke, some sun-dried tomatoes, which some people regard as a food form, and a little bowl of olives, including bright green ones - from Sicily. They will tell you these things at Sage: where the olives are from, where they get their meats and why, how they were about to start a tasting menu the next day. I, rather rudely, called for an ad break, but it's a sign that they're so excited about what they're doing here that, if you show any interest, they want to share.

What they are doing here is not flash, it's not complicated: it is simply done beautifully. And it turned out to be one of the best meals we've had anywhere in ages.

I had the soup of courgettes, red onions and parmesan. And it was wonderful: robust in flavour, velvety in texture.

His spinach and ricotta ravioli with sage and butter sauce is one of those plain dishes you have to make with flair. Many places don't; Sage does. A perfect ravioli is a joy of a thing; little parcels of ordinary things made special by a deft hand with the dough. These were so good he said, no thanks, he didn't want to taste the venison fillet that came with my bucatini. He said he didn't want anything else. Possibly ever.

I made him take a piece, because this was an extraordinary dish, perfectly done, with venison you could cut with a fork, resting in a rich puddle of porcini mushroom sauce and a pile of pasta.

We shared a tiramisu, another of those things often made gluggily and horrid. Sage makes a version so light you could almost imagine you'd never eaten it, that it was just a lovely dream.

On my birthday I might go back and eat a whole one.

Address: Cnr Atkin Ave and Tamaki Dr, Mission Bay
Phone: (09) 528 4551
Open: for lunch, Tues-Sun; dinner seven days
Owner: Kim Korkman
Head chef: Jean-Philippe Kerstenne
From the menu: Bruschetta with smoked mozzarella, $8; seafood tortellini with a lemon beurre blanc sauce, $15.50 or $21; pannacotta, $12
Wine list: Italian, small, interesting, reasonable
Vegetarian: Oh yes, they even cater for vegos with prejudices against gluten. What an evening that would be.
Bottom line: Assured food and enthusiastic, professional service by people who care about what they're doing, from the kitchen to the table. A perfectly pitched meal from beginning to end.

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