MR MORRIS
Cuisine: Modern bistro
Address: Excelsior Building cnr Galway and Commerce Streets, Britomart
Phone: (09) 869 5522
Reservations: Accepted
Drinks: Fully licensed
From the menu: “Mr Morris experience” $125pp
Rating: 17/20
Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great,
I’ll be honest, it’s bleak in the city. We booked an early-bird table at a restaurant but the peak crowd never arrived – presumably they were at home waiting for mortgage interest rates to come down and wondering if they could do without Disney+. At the end of dinner we strolled through Britomart’s Takutai Square, in the shadow of the ghostly, abandoned skyscraper, past four or five of Auckland’s best restaurants. All but one had just a handful of diners. The time was 9pm.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
At every place I’ve visited recently staff are working hard, but there’s a noticeable lack of spring in the step of those who have customer contact. I haven’t heard about staffing shortages much lately but there does seem to be a paucity of sommeliers, charming managers and bright young waiters busting to learn as much as they can about their beloved new profession. Food is often dropped at your table without enthusiasm. Open kitchens feature grim and banterless chefs. In a month Viva’s deputy editor Johanna Thornton and I will name the best restaurant in the city. By then it might have to be “the last one left”.
This stuff can be self-perpetuating of course. An empty room with glum waiters doesn’t exactly make you want to rush back. And look, I get that the city’s weekly restaurant reviewer writing about how dismal it’s all looking might not be the pep-talk we need right now but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade.
On the bright side (he says, pulling a handbrake turn and accelerating back towards the Land of Lollipops and Rainbows), spring produce has arrived, our meat and fish is still the best in the world and our top chefs haven’t abandoned us yet. Sid Sahrawat, Michael Meredith, Cory Campbell and Zennon Wijlens continue to create food worth flying from the Northern Hemisphere to eat, while a new generation is emerging with their own vital energy: Tushar Grover at Rhu, Henry Onesemo at Tala and now Georgia Van Prehn at Mr Morris are the faces of Auckland’s eating future. And their food is just as exciting whether you’ve squeezed in on a waiting list or you’re the only couple in the room.
Mr Morris is famously the restaurant of Michael Meredith but in Georgia he has found someone who will both protect his legacy and lead the kitchen to new places. She is a chef of inspiration and confidence, applying the same intelligent creativity to a broccoli stalk as she does to an expensive piece of duck. Her previous restaurant, Alta, deserved to be famous but the timing was off – the twin enemies of lockdown and inflation proving too much for a kitchen that refused to give people what they expected.
In her new home at Mr Morris she has the best of both worlds – an audience of locals and regulars, and a dream kitchen, with a fire pit in the centre and a bar surrounded by adoring diners. If she was set up to fail at Alta she is set up to succeed here, and I’m excited to watch it happen.
Early indications are good. She’s kept on a couple of Michael Meredith signature dishes – a crispy chicken skin with parfait and an Asian-inflected pāua snack. But her heroic vegetables soon start to arrive: a delicious if unspectacular buckwheat cracker with broccoli two ways and some pickled mustard seeds then, later, a beautiful dish in which she cooks sheets of purple beetroot in butter then layers them over a pile of baby yellow ones on an irresistible truffled creme fraiche; it’s finished with smoked apple dressing and onion powder. Pumpkin gnocchi was bright orange and beautiful, with a strong saffron-flavoured sauce, pickled lemon and delicate spring flowers to complete the picture. Even that parfait had a little sheet of pickled pumpkin laid over it as if to say “I’ve arrived”.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.Yes, she is here for the vegos, but she’s also unafraid of the grill. She does as much as she can on that fire and it pays off – the surface of the duck sizzle-brown with the most tender, pink, juicy meat inside, served with a moreish agrodolce jus. We were worn down by the time the lamb rump arrived but it was perfectly cooked too, with another star vegetable – red capsicum – charred and peeled and laid over the top of the meat for colour and smoky sweet flavour.
Last week I paid $150 for a tasting menu. Here at Mr Morris I paid $125 and got almost twice the amount of food, of an equal quality. If you took up their early evening discount you’d get a little less but still have the meal of your life, I reckon. You might not fall in love with the service yet, but these things go both ways – once a queue starts to form out the door, I’d be surprised if the staff don’t find another gear.
Mostly I want them to sell their chef a little more. Who is she? What makes her cooking special? What has she done with this dish and why has she done it? Diners connect to food but they connect even more to people. Georgia Van Prehn will be a star, but she can’t do it on her own.
More restaurant reviews
From dining out editor Jesse Mulligan.
‘Serve Tiramisu Or Die’: Jesse Mulligan Reviews Sidart In Its New ‘Casual’ Italian Era. What can you expect from the ‘new’ fine diner, Sidart?
Visit Rhu In Parnell For The Most Delicious And Imaginative Meal You’ll Ever Eat. The ‘boy genius’ in the kitchen might be Jesse Mulligan’s chef of the year.
Koji in Wellington Has The Service And Vibe Nailed. The food is Asian fusion in a controlled and visionary way.
San Ray Brings Hospitality With Heart To Ponsonby Road. Dariush Lolaiy and Rebecca Smidt of Cazador’s new all-day dining spot is easy to love.
Bianca In Ellerslie Is The Hottest Ticket In Town. Brave the queues for dishes that can’t be missed.
