LIBERTY
Cuisine: Bistro
Address: 227 Cuba St, Wellington
Phone: (04) 801 8787
Website: Libertyrestaurant.co.nz
Drinks: Fully licensed
Reservations: Accepted
From the menu: Cheddar puff $5 ea; grilled octopus $28; burrata $28; oyster mushrooms $27; ricotta gnocchi $46; lamb shoulder $48
Rating: 16/20
Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing,
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Advertise with NZME.For this, Viva’s Money Issue, I visited our moneyed capital city where, in the view of the Wellington-based journalist I was dining with, the locals are awash with cash and happy to spend it.
“You can’t get into half these restaurants with less than a week’s notice,” he reported. “Almost everybody I know is a consultant for one of the Ministries and doing very, very well.”
Lucky them, and while October may well herald a change of government along with a mass turning off of the taps, for now the city is visibly cranking. The taxi back to my hotel took me past long lines of people cheerfully queuing for nightclubs; there was no sign of the aggro and darkness that seemed to stalk the city for a couple of years.
These were just my observations on one night, but over the course of a long dinner, a gig and a succession of “last drinks”, I witnessed a city that seemed happy and busy and prosperous.
A helpful local PR had sent me a handful of new and interesting restaurants to consider reviewing and I landed at Liberty, the latest project of Logan Brown’s Steve Logan. You may have visited this space when it was Beer Meats Grill, a nice enough place pretty well summed up by its title.
Liberty is a classier proposition, with monochrome interiors and branding, and a menu font that says “serifs are important to us”.
The waiters are dressed formally and headed up by Pietro Boscia, an enthusiastic Sicilian who speaks colourfully and with great knowledge on all aspects of the menu, particularly the wine.
The interior layout is a curious one, with a massive semi-oval bar and kitchen in the middle of everything, occupying a portion of the dining room approximately equal to the amount of space your teeth and tongue take up in your mouth.
They manage to fit in a few tables — a key part of a restaurant’s business model, presumably — but because you’re all eating around the periphery you don’t feel particularly connected to anybody else in the room, for better or for worse.
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Anyway, service is very good, beginning with a martini so cold and strong I nursed it for 20 minutes, before eventually gulping down the last briny mouthful in time for food (side note: I’ve discovered I prefer my martinis “wet and dirty” — that is, with extra vermouth and extra olive juice — but I’ve yet to find a waiter who doesn’t give this order a courtesy laugh, as though I am trying to amuse him with the double entendre, and, as a former professional comedian, I’m embarrassed enough by it that I’m considering switching drinks).
The food menu is solid if not thrilling bistro fare — I had difficulty finding something I was excited about, which is saying a lot in a new restaurant in a new city.
With help from the waiter we ordered cheddar puffs, which went down very well with a cold wine — two little warm, stretchy balls of cheesiness served with white chevre (fromage sur fromage), a drizzle of honey and broken hazelnuts. Great combo.
My dining buddy doesn’t eat meat (it says something about the two cities that I don’t know a single male vegetarian in Auckland but chanced upon one at my dinner table in the capital) so we ate more plant-based food than I would normally have ordered, with mostly good results.
I could have done without the fungi dish — tempura is not enough treatment for oyster mushrooms, which need a blast of big flavour, in my opinion — but the burrata was a hit, its own subtle charms boosted with white olives, tamarillo and ashy fennel fronds.
The side of Brussels would have almost worked as a main — you do grow tired of big mouthfuls of brassica usually, but here they boost it with lentils and quinoa, those little scatterings of protein really doing wonders for the dish. Atop the bowl of cooked sprouts were two cold, pickled ones which had the faint burn of horseradish about them and were a nice novelty.
His gnocchi main was great — made with ricotta rather than potato, the gnocchi were light and loose to chew through, enriched with almond cream and a butternut puree that sat brightly on the dish like a vegan egg yolk.
My lamb shoulder was nice enough — a bit tough in places if I’m honest but tasty and freshened up with fresh mint leaves — and I wouldn’t order the octopus tentacle again for texture but maybe it was an unlucky night in the kitchen.
If you’re planning a Wellington escape this will be a solid choice. Afterwards, consider a show at San Fran and drinks at Puffin Bar — forget about the so-called recession, and party like a public servant.
