Herald rating: * * * *
Address: Viaduct Harbour
Phone: Ph 356 7249
Web: soulsearch.co.nz
Open: 7 days
Cuisine: Contemporary bistro
From the menu: Pan-fried scallops with caviar, confit bacon and soft-boiled egg dressing $22.50; Spatchcock quail, white asparagus and Puy lentil dressing $41.50; Lemon tart with raspberry essence, buttermilk sherbet, bitter chocolate marquis $16
Vegetarian: Own menu
Wine: Vintage
KEY POINTS:
It's been written that there is no restaurant in Auckland that divides people as much as Soul, and you can put me firmly on the side of the ambivalents.
Even the soul-less would have to admit that it has the best site in the city. Dining on the terrace, looking at the super-yachts berthed in the basin on a balmy summer evening, it can feel like Monte Carlo.
Except that last time I was dining on a terrace, looking at the super-yachts berthed in the basin on a balmy summer evening, it was in Monte Carlo, and all the restaurants were cheap menu turistico pizza and pasta joints. Something that Soul definitely isn't.
Some love the ambience: others find it a place to seek gratifications other than those formed from a deep and lasting relationship with food.
Some insist the quality of service depends on celebrity or football skills: once was Warrior = fawning; occasional appearance in the Waikato reserves = you'll wait all night for a second glass of Lindy.
An attitude reinforced late on this evening when Kerry, ever-so-slightly ironically, asked our help-person, "And how is your evening going?" "Good," he replied, "most of them are up to dessert now." An eccentric soul.
But I am jumping three or four hundred dollars ahead of myself.
Gareth Stewart, the head chef, calls on all the fusions of flavours, ingredients, styles and influences that characterise the modern menu. "Bessara" and "almond tarator" and "warm jou jou bread" will have you thinking that the recipes have just been stolen from a wizened Moroccan grandmother or have come fresh off the Food Channel.
"Mediterranean-infused, Asian-influenced, Aotearoa contemporary bistro" just about covers it. These days I've given up trying to define any place by cuisine unless it serves seafood stew, in which case you can be pretty sure it's southwestern Languedoc, though it may be northeastern Catalunyan.
Jude began with "spiced fried calamari with Andalusian-style whipped avocado, yoghurt and cucumber sauce" and found it criss-crossed with all the mentioned influences apart from the most important: "spiced" it wasn't. "Flobby" was her word, which captures that magic moment in cooking seafood between spot-on and not quite there.
Tanya's entree - prawns, sauteed in garlic, with chilli popcorn - was cute, and would have been cuter if the central characters had been more excited about their roles. Again, the kitchen held back on the hot tastes.
The table voted my buffalo mozzarella, seared vine tomatoes, basil and prosciutto as best of the bunch. Hint for aspiring chefs: that was a simply assembled, nearly uncooked insalata caprese.
We'd debated the mains for some time. All sounded interesting until the food arrived and we realised that our meals were a simply grilled pork chop (praise where it's due, and that goes to the gorgeously rendered strips of crackling) with flavoured polenta and a scatter of leaves, or a chicken breast ditto with a pea puree.
Kerry preferred something light and asked for the tuna entree as a main, which landed as a platter of sushi-looking roll-ups, barely seared (nothing wrong with that), to be dipped with pureed cauliflower and pink grapefruit. She was less than enthused with the flavour, or lack of it.
Our waiter recommended that we might need a side dish. Agreed, and we recommend Jersey bennes, which seem particularly sweet this year, in lemon oil, dill, parsley; and a tasty platter of asparagus, sauteed with mint yoghurt.
Three desserts seemed about right to assess that section of the offerings. Jude and Kerry enjoyed the dark chocolate molten pudding, the classic crossing cultures with cinnamon churros and pistachio ice cream; I thought the strawberry tart and basil ice cream needed zing and chamomile panna cotta, with ginger and honeycomb off-sets, a study in bland.
Given the waiter I'd thought of asking for a bottle of ennui, but I've read that the hot new wine for summer 2008 is arneis and I was desperately trying not to look out of place here. So, a bottle of Coopers Creek's "The Little Rascal". That's the grape's nickname in Italian, and this was perfect: crisp, light, fresh and fruity, if that doesn't make it sound too much like muesli.
Perhaps I just don't get Soul. Perhaps it's not about the food: it is part-restaurant, part-bar, part-find someone and a good two-thirds of the punters probably don't care, or are past caring, if good snapper is roasted to dryness.
All I can say is, Kerry, Tanya, Jude and I really liked the idea of a lovely meal, sitting on a waterfront terrace on a summer evening, and if anyone would like to shout us, we'll meet you at Euro anytime.
