Once the place to be, Sails has come adrift from modern tastes. Photo / Babiche Martens
Viva rating: * * *
Where: Westhaven Marina
Ph:(09) 378 9890
Open: Dinner 7 nights, lunch Mon-Fri.
Vegetarian: Ask for separate menu.
Wine list: High tide.
Cuisine: Classics.
From the menu: Salt & pepper squid, cucumber, peanut relish, sweet chilli caramel $21.60; Fish & chips, caper, gherkin, Spanish onion, parsley mayo $29.50; Lemon cream fruit salad, mango sorbet $14.90.
Got chatting to the lads at Sam's 20th birthday party. They were comparing the great names like Sid and Michael and you can fill in a few of your own. After a couple of minutes I realised they weren't talking about legendary All Blacks, they were weighing up
the merits of various chefs. Probably realised when they started talking about Jason and Kate. There may have been an All Black named Jason but I doubt there was one called Kate.
The Jason in question being Blackie, who was sous-chef at The French Café for Kate Faye which (on very good authority) is an extremely fast and good learning curve. Faye moved to Cibo, Blackie to Sails as executive chef, where he's been for the past few years and won awards for his seafood, beef and lamb dishes.
Which got me thinking it was about time Jude and I trawled down to Westhaven, for Sails seems to have dropped off the radar. Not a good idea for a restaurant in a yacht harbour.
First impressions, not a lot has changed: the vast, long room overlooking the masts and moorings and sheets and all those other nautical expressions; hushed air of respectability and (face it) money; tablecloths, gentlemanly waiters in waistcoats.
In the safe hands of Bart Littlejohn, second-generation restaurateur, since 1991, and Gerald Mooney, staffer since'94 and manager since 2000, it's the way they - and a loyal, conservative clientele like the place.
Blackie has moved the menu away from maritime themes. Greasies are still there, dressed up with caper, gherkin, Spanish onion, parsley mayo for $29.50, and fish is served three ways - tomato gratin with pine nut relish; panko crab cake and gremolata, or summer vegetables with lime leaf bouillon, aioli and scallops.
I took on his goat's cheese dish. Blackie crumbs the cheese and cooks it to a sweet ooze, accompanies with panzanella, the garlicky Tuscan bread, tomato and vegetable salad, rimmed with balsamic and basil oil. It makes for a heavier entrée than other city chefs are offering, a feeling underscored with my main. The roasted half-duck was a fair whack of fowl; it was also darned close to tough and the shallot tarte tatin overcooked and dry. Plum and anise jus added to the richness of the dish.
Jude is not usually keen on the old 60s' combo of surf-and-turf but the waiter convinced her that the pork belly and scallop entree was worth the gamble. He was right: two sweet, juicy white meats, both suited to and enhanced by the dash of red-apple coleslaw. I convinced her that she should treat herself to an indulgent main: crayfish thermidor.
Blackie's version has the cooked tail meat tossed with brandy mustard cream rather than béchamel, topped with cheese and browned. Here, it went down a treat.
Coffee and donuts, Valrhona and milk chocolate with strawberry jelly and hazelnut praline. By that stage, the kilojoules didn't matter.
We pushed the boat out with wine, too: Pol Roger snifters, Nautilus pinot gris (cheese), Gunn Estate chardonnay (cray) and Rockburn pinot noir (duck). An excellent match: $17.50 for a tot, though?
You can't fault a restaurant for doing things that please its punters just because they're not to one's taste. Sails, though, feels out of sync with contemporary tastes and lacks the passion for the food and service of our better restaurants: perhaps that is why it is in a backwater. It has the site; it could have the style; and it is certainly charging top dollar. Needs work, for at the moment, it's hard to see how the Sails' mains sit.
