KOL
Cuisine: Indian-inspired
Address: 23 Ponsonby Rd, Ponsonby
Contact: 021 379 100
Drinks: Fully licensed
Reservations: Accepted
From the menu: Prawn toast $10; kingfish $28; chicken $28; oyster mushrooms $28; lamb $36; goat’s cheese kulcha $20; naan icecream $20
Rating: 16/20
Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a
It’s extremely difficult to find something to complain about at one of Sid and Chand Sahrawat’s restaurants — take it from me, somebody who has reviewed them over a dozen times now and has historically resorted to such criticisms as “we were served too many desserts”.
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Advertise with NZME.But the faults are a little easier to find in the early days of KOL, where staff training isn’t quite complete and where the idiosyncrasies of the corner building that used to be MooChowChow are still being worked out.
It’s a cocktail bar, so the drinks should be phenomenally good, but they are sometimes assembled hastily and without care — mine hadn’t been stirred so didn’t arrive cold enough.
They are expensive too — there’s just 30ml of gin (wholesale cost $3 ex GST) in my $25 Aamba, a mildly spiked mango lassi created with the rotary evaporator (an impressive, beige appliance that tends to dominate your view when you’re seated at the bar, though the bartender tells me it won’t be used while customers are here), which is the cheapest specialty cocktail on the menu.
We were eating in the backroom annex to the building, and I wouldn’t yet recommend these seats (you can choose on the website when booking). Last to fill and first to empty, the room has no buzz even on a busy night, and the waiters place your food on a raised bar which is above your eye level (I’m six foot one), so you can’t see what’s on your plate.
That’s a shame because the food is, of course, wonderful and interesting. There are lists of what equate to appetisers, entrees, mains and breads but they’re all served to share, so your ordering is more about getting a mix of styles than creating a multicourse experience. The chefs largely avoid the deep fryer and instead do their magic tricks on a bank of glowing charcoal, which we glimpsed briefly on our way out.
I loved the chicken, cooked in a tandoor and served with a sort of raita — the yoghurt enriched with a background smoke created by an emulsion of charred onion. On top, chilli peppers served with their leaves attached, demonstrate reverence for the produce and evidence that the kitchen has good connections with their growers (speaking of which, try the bar’s delicious strawberry “cordial” if you can, a salted ferment of berries patiently collected from wild plants).
You must order the kulcha, a naan parcel filled with an incredibly moreish mix of goat’s cheese and porcini mushroom. They drizzle truffle oil over the top then cut it into quarters and it is just as delicious as it sounds.
And then there were the oyster mushrooms, a surprise Auckland hit in the 2020s, with incredible versions of this funky fungi popping up at Omni, kingi and now KOL. There’s enough textural complexity to excite even carnivorous chefs, and the mushroom responds well to high heat, crisping up at the edges but remaining luscious and al dente in the middle.
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Advertise with NZME.It’s also a great vehicle for flavour, and here it comes with a luxurious gravy of ghost chilli and macadamia — that nut not a native to India, but providing the same sort of creamy indulgence you might get from almonds in a good korma.
Though it sounds delicious, I’ll wait until somebody else is paying to try the duck ($85). But if you enjoy the fatty deliciousness that is lamb ribs, they do a great version here, on a sweet date “mole” with cute doughy onion rings and a dukkah-like sprinkle of nuts and spices.
The only dish that struggled to impress was the raw kingfish, an Auckland restaurant standard, which I’d formerly thought was impossible to mess up. It’s a little hard to unpick what it was served with here but there wasn’t enough acid or sodium to give the protein any interest.
The waiter mentioned a citrus crumble but this was hard to detect, and the dominant feature was an icy sorbet, which felt out of place. It was served with ribbons of carrot, allegedly pickled but I’ll have to take their word on that as the flavour was pretty flat.
But there are loads of good eats here — so many I’d be surprised if you left feeling anything but happy and full.
It’s a great wine list too, should those cocktail prices put you off, and bar manager Mangesh Shah, who took university training in order to run that evaporator, has the sort of infectious energy where you know he’ll be working day and night to turn this into the best bar on Ponsonby Rd.
Book a table with a view of the kitchen, bring some good friends and enjoy the latest fruits of the Sahrawats’ imagination.
