Auckland Restaurant Review: At New Restaurant Parro There’s Nowhere For The Chefs To Hide

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By Jesse Mulligan

Tuesday Jul. 09, 2024

Viva

Parro's cured raw fish with white gazpacho, grapefruit, orange dressing and mandarin. Photo / Babiche Martens

PARRO

Cuisine: Mediterranean

Address: 359 Dominion Rd, Mt Eden

Contact: 022 490 7935

Drinks: Fully licensed

Reservations: Accepted

From the menu: Cured raw fish $24, beef carpaccio $26, eggplant romesco $22, lamb sweetbreads $26, chicken tortellini with truffle $39, grilled snapper $36

Rating: 17/20

Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing,

Okay, so here’s another restaurant name you’re probably not going to remember.

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Mate, I do this for a living and I still struggle to conjure up the names of some of these places. Ada, Ahi, Aigo, Alma, Amano, Atelier, Azabu … I’m writing them down alphabetically and I reckon that’s seven different languages without even getting to the letter B. This is all, no doubt, a sign of Auckland’s international, cosmopolitan food scene but it does make it very difficult when you’re trying to Google a street address.

Let me save you a headache and tell you that Parro (Spanish for ‘duck’ according to some websites, though I wouldn’t say it was at all conclusive) is in the old Omni (no, not Onslow, Origine, Ockhee, or Ooh-Fa, which is just next door) on Dominion Rd. If they’ve done anything to the previous fit-out I couldn’t tell, but they didn’t need to — it’s a small and lovely space where a couple of chefs wander around in the same room as you, cooking this and that.

There are no secrets in this restaurant, which makes for a very pure experience. You watch your protein go from raw to cooked in real time, and although there was one more woman in a back room who was up to something, the way these two guys cooked multiple courses for a couple of dozen people at a time was impressive to behold.

Chef Gleber Chaparro works in the open-plan kitchen. Photo / Babiche Martens

I’d planned to eat by myself but the website told me there was no availability. Then my wife became free so I tried again for two of us and behold, we were offered multiple time slots (weird, I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “behold” before and now just used it twice, like I’m reviewing a favourite chapter of the Bible for my parish newsletter). A software glitch or a conspiracy against solo diners? There are good, single-suitable bar seats at the front window so I hope they fix this — it’s bad enough eating alone without being told you’re not even allowed to do that.

Chef and owner Gleber Chaparro (oh wait, maybe that’s where the name came from) is a serious, bearded individual with a nice list of credits to his name, including Amano, Depot and Lillius, sorry, Lilian. I often wonder how many chefs include big-name restaurants on their CV even when their time there went very badly, but that’s almost definitely not the case here because three of the Lilian boys were sitting at the table next to us cheering their ex-employee on. I love it: hearting an Instagram post is one thing but when it comes to supporting someone, showing up for them has about 100x the impact.

The food is great. It’s “Mediterranean” which covers everything from labneh to gelato, but Andalusia in the south of Spain features prominently, especially in the enthusiastic and successful use of sherry throughout the menu (forget the bottle of Old Masters your mum used to keep under the sink for Christmas; the word ‘sherry’ derives from the Spanish town of Jerez where the good stuff — either very dry or very sweet — is made).

The grilled fish with pil pil, gambas and chicken jus with charred carrots. Photo / Babiche Martens

I loved the ceviche: fresh slices of snapper with various forms of citrus and the masterstroke, a base of white gazpacho, the blended almond adding creamy body to the translucent slivers of fish. The aubergine is brilliant too, quite the change from Omni’s battered flavour-bomb, it’s a more subtle layering of thin grilled slices, flavoured with romesco, parmesan and sherry reduction, all hidden from view by handmade amaranth crackers.

The beef carpaccio was perfectly cooked and tasted good, though I’m not sure about the golf ball-size blob of smoked cheese foam delivered by cream whipper — the flavour works but the visuals seem a bit off. As always I encourage you to vote with your dollar and order the offal to help encourage chefs to keep this rare treat on our menus. Here it is lamb sweetbreads (I could explain what these are but I’m not sure it’ll help), notable more for their creamy texture than their flavour, mixed up with chorizo crumb, bitter braised endive leaves and a sweet sticky dressing. We wished we’d ordered bread to help mop all this stuff up.

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The celeriac and ricotta tortellini is a standout dish, says Jesse Mulligan. Photo / Babiche Martens

The tortellini (filled with celeriac and ricotta) is a must order just for the deep chicken broth that comes with it, and the only dish that didn’t light me up was the grilled fish — more snapper, skin on and dull-tasting with a faintly sweet lemon sauce and an ambitious chicken/prawn/squid ink reduction. The “charred carrots” were quite pale and uniform rather than the rustic blistered veges I was expecting.

The winelist is great (start as we did with a round of Huia Blanc de Blanc, then consider the wonderful chardonnay with that tortellini) and there is a simple design beauty to the whole endeavour, even the website, that will make you pleased you chose the place.

I’m not sure we’ll be welcome back, as in an attempt to close the drafty door once and for all, Victoria accidentally locked it. We’d arrived early and were enjoying having the room to ourselves before we noticed a small queue of hungry people on the street outside struggling to get in. Sorry. Consider bringing something warm if the wind is coming in from the east.