Soto, Ponsonby

Prawn and oyster filo tempura. Picture / Carolyn Elliott

Herald rating: * * *

It is very rude and silly to be rude and silly about the cuisine of other cultures just because you don't know what something is, and just because the thing in question happens to have a stupid-sounding name.

At Soto we had a dango. I tried very hard to find out what a dango is. I asked two different wait-people and then when I got home I Googled the damn dango.

I am ashamed to admit that by the time we came to the dango part of proceedings we were being quietly rude and silly.

I'm almost sure nobody heard me say: "A television critic's got my dango."

Even if the wait-people - who are beautiful young women with beautiful manners and not a clue - had heard this they wouldn't have known what I was on about.

They didn't all night and this was just fine, because it was mutual.

Anyway, nothing could have been ruder than the girl who spent the night alternating between arguing with her boyfriend and eating beef teppanyaki with chopsticks and talking on her cellphone. It could well be that I was simply envious of her dexterity. Although if my boyfriend was such a bore I would have used my skill with the sticks to push his eyeballs in.

The TC and I almost had an argument before we left to go out for our tea because he wanted to have Soto's signature dish, the prawn and oyster filo tempura ($16), and I had already baggsed it. The argument was averted when I magnanimously announced that he was allowed the dish. My attempt at magnanimity failed when it was noted that I had my eye on the fried Udon noodles with New Zealand clams ($14).

There was some food-ordering karma at work here because the TC's tempura was simply splendid. It looked beautiful; tasted fantastic: two fat prawns, two fat oysters served up in golden shards of crispy filo which exploded in your mouth. The wasabi caviar sparkled like tiny emeralds.

And then the night started to go badly awry. His main, a sushi combo on a long white plate, arrived while he was still eating his tempura and before my clams. About 15 minutes before my clams.

I tried to ask whether there had been confusion. Were the meals going to arrive one by one? Because we hadn't intended to share. This simply caused much more confusion. When my plate arrived there were two clams, two pipis and two mussels. I hate mussels and attempted to convey that I would never have ordered this dish if the menu had told me it included them.

There was, eventually, a half-hearted offer to remove the offending plate and bring me something else.

Given that the TC's main had already arrived I thought we had better push on.

My panko crumbed pork cutlet, in a mild Japanese curry sauce, was pretty boring. I am very fond of the mild Japanese curry but this sauce was bland and flat.

The TC said his sushi was OK, but nothing like the best sushi he's had.

For pud we had a selection of three desserts: a green tea tiramisu (why?), black sesame-seed icecream (quite nice, if a bit like eating sand icecream) and the dango.

We did not admire the service which was ridiculous. We had to ask, after much flashing past and smiling and not noticing by the wait people, for "something to eat this [our pud] with".

Perhaps this is what Soto means when it says it offers "free-style Japanese cuisine".

Oh, and a dango is, I think, a powdered rice-and-sugar dumpling which, if you were being rude and silly, looks like an eyeball and rolls about the mouth in the manner you imagine an eyeball would. Possibly one plucked from a bore. 

Address: 13 St Marys Rd, Ponsonby

Ph: 360 0021

Executive chef: Makoto Tokuyama

From the menu:

Pan-fried squid and asparagus noodles, served with a spicy garlic soy sauce, $16; roast lamb rack served on a bed of bok choy with a miso butter sauce, $29; grape and banana tempura served with a honey and chocolate sauce (as part of a three-dessert tasting platter, $12)

Wine list: Comprehensive enough but not a lot by the glass

Vegetarian: I shouldn't encourage the tofu eaters, but there's that sort of stuff posing as food on the menu

Bottom line: The wait-people look beautiful and the service is terrible and the food sounds wonderful but doesn't quite come off