KEY POINTS:
They don't make women like they used to. The blonde is proof of that. I don't mean the Blonde - although she is, too - but the blonde rising from the azure water of a tropical sea. She's wearing a white bikini. And she's built like an All
Black prop forward.
This can't be right. The first Bond girl, Ursula Andress, was a beauty in an era when scrawny models in pigtails and pouting infantilised poses didn't have the cachet they have these days. This was a woman with flesh on her bones - but I don't remember her being as wide as a brick dunny.
My memory serves me well - a rare event. It turns out that her image, video-projected on to the wall of an Onehunga cafe and deli, is set at the wrong aspect ratio, so Sean Connery looks more lantern-jawed than sleek, and those shaken vodka martinis look as though they're being served in saucers.
Even with an excessively chunky Andress, Dr No (the first Bond film, from 1962) is a major hoot. The villains wear nylon and mesh suits to protect themselves from radiation, the back-projection in the car chase is laughably clunky, and the Bond Girl's name, Honey Ryder, is (like Pussy Galore in Goldfinger) charmingly adolescent innuendo.
The aspect ratio is about the only thing they get wrong at Ultra, an unprepossessing but marvellous eatery at the upper end of Onehunga Mall. It's open only one evening a week - Wednesday, movie night - but by all reports, it gives a very good account of itself during the seven days of the week - and had been suggested to us by a fellow movie fan who lives round the corner. It called for a bit of forward planning to avoid Fiddler on the Roof, but Dr No was irresistible.
It may seem a mystery that people would turn up in numbers to watch a distorted screening with a crummy soundtrack of a 45-year-old spy movie which they could rent on DVD, but they do. The place was packed. I am tempted to speculate that it's about the shared communal experience - the cinema screen is the 20th-century equivalent of the caveman's campfire and all that. But it is just as likely to be about the excellent food.
As the waitresses move about the darkened restaurant, ducking and diving so as not to get in anyone's sightline, the kitchen crew is hard at work, quietly turning out simple and simply delicious tucker.
The same menu won't be there the night you go, but some of our selections will give you the flavour of it: a zesty tart of goat's cheese and leeks; a thick soup of beans and winter vegetables; salmon in filo on caramelised beetroot; a sirloin steak the size of a boxer's fist, done to juicy perfection; pannacotta of Earl Grey tea. This is not plain food, but it's unpretentious and delicious; the prices (mains start at just under $20 and the dearest is barely $25) are equally palatable.
It's another Bond on Wednesday - A View to a Kill. That nancy boy Roger Moore is not a patch on Connery, but the food will be terrific. Book your seat now.
Wine list: Small and smart
Vegetarians: At least half the menu.
Watch out for: The aspect ratio
Sound check: Sssh. I'm trying to watch the movie.
Bottom line: A smart idea and excellent, honest food to match
-Detours, HoS
