Herald rating: * * 1/2
Address: 8 Anzac Rd, Browns Bay
Ph: (09) 479 6039
Open: Tuesday-Saturday from 5 pm
Wine list: Adequate
Vegetarians: Two pastas, one pizza
Watch out for: The "gorgonzola"
Bottom line: Suburban McItalian.
KEY POINTS:
Judging by the scowls I see as I leave restaurants, some waiting staff seem to think that taking orders, bringing food to the table, clearing dishes, that sort of stuff, should earn them a hefty gratuity. But tips - in New Zealand, at least - are for exceptional service.
That's why our waitress at Sp'getti got one. All evening she took my queries about the provenance of some (pretty sub-standard) ingredients to the kitchen and brought their answers back, all without letting the sparkle slip from her radiant smile. She found wielding a corkscrew a bit of a challenge (in these days of screw-top wine bottles I suppose we have to be grateful when a waitress knows what a corkscrew is) but she was patient and charming.
The Blonde and I were in East Coast Bays at a reader's recommendation, which I had accepted somewhat sceptically. The spelling of the restaurant's name was enough to get my suspicions up. If you are going to use an apostrophe to show missing letters (a punctuation device unique to English), surely it should be "sp'g'etti". Perhaps they don't know how to spell "spaghetti", I thought. Perhaps - perish the thought - they don't know how to cook it.
Well after having eaten there, I am none the wiser about the last matter since none of our party of four - we were joined by the Blonde's mum and niece - ordered spaghetti. But even if their carbonara had been to die for it would not have changed my mind about the meal as a whole.
Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think a restaurant that describes itself as Italian should serve up agnolotti from a packet - especially when they call it tortellini on the menu. It shouldn't name a pasta dish "gorgonzola" when its flavouring is New Zealand-made blue cheese. And it should not serve a ratatouille sauce containing no discernible trace of eggplant.
Sp'getti is an Italian restaurant in name only and it's not so good on the names either.
The spaghetti sauce described as bolognaise (a French word) rather than "alla bolognese" should be a giveaway, though nobody takes the trouble to spell menu items correctly so you can't infer anything from that. But when the pizza toppings include cranberry and camembert or roast potatoes, you know you are closer to the North Shore than Napoli.
The Blonde's mum, a local, enjoyed that misnamed gorgonzola pasta, even after it burned her mouth quite badly - I assume because a microwave had superheated the interior. The Blonde was deeply despondent about her rigatoni with ratatouille sauce. To be fair, she had misread the menu and was expecting a dish of ratatouille; but to be fairer still, the sauce was so sparing as to be virtually a garnish and devoid of visible aubergine, which is a bit like leaving the beef out of filet mignon.
My veal, served on a kumara mash, was cut a bit thin for any taste to survive the richness of its sauce but was nicely moist.
The cheesecake and panna cotta (both made in-house) were quite superb.
But the evening served as a reminder that there is a world of difference between an Italian restaurant and a restaurant serving Italian food.
- Detours, HoS
