Restaurant Review: At The Sudima’s New Rooftop Bar, Order A Cocktail

SUNSET BAR Address: 10th floor, 63-67 Nelson St, CBD Contact: (09) 399 2367. Open Thur-Sat, from 4pm Drinks: Fully licensed From the menu: Poppadoms and avocado $12; fried chicken $15; potato sliders $14; lamb skewers $20; “Crunchetta” salad $14; masala fries $12 Reservations: Not accepted

It’s a shame to visit a rooftop bar in murky weather but if you’d been waiting for an Auckland day without rain this winter you’d have never left the house.

Sunset Bar is at the top of the Sudima Hotel on Nelson St and faces north towards the harbour bridge and beyond but, as at the excellent Palmer Bar a few weeks ago, all we could really see was the rain hammering against the window.

Still, I got the gist. It’s a new, expensively appointed cocktail bar with room for hundreds, and in summer those big doors will open up and guests will spill out into the early evening sun, the altitude creating if not quite the sort of emotional wreckage you get watching a movie after a glass of gin on a plane, at least enough lofty other-worldliness that you end up drinking more than you should, and doing things you possibly shouldn’t.

Not being in my twenties anymore I was insured against these dangers, my rock ’n’ roll behaviour these days being limited to ordering more food than is strictly necessary and perhaps undoing an extra shirt button after 9pm.

It’s not the sort of behaviour you find in a tell-all memoir, though there’s a good chance tell-all memoirs will disappear soon anyway, given that anyone even slightly famous documents their life in real-time via a constant stream of photos and videos broadcast to the phones of anybody who’s vaguely interested.

What are they going to tell us in their autobiography? The name of the filter they were using?

Hotel bars have advantages (good air conditioning, service generally excellent) and disadvantages (hard to create a vibe, high chance of sharing the elevator with a robed man) but overall Sunset’s pleasures outweigh the pains.

It’s a lovely, softly lit room to walk into, quite different to anything else Auckland offers, and the chemistry was really good until a conference full of businesspeople flooded in and made us feel like we were crashing a private function.

But the staff didn’t blink or falter, and we never found ourselves waiting for anything, despite ordering some pretty labour-intensive cocktails and every food item on the menu.

So yes, the food. It’s a menu that didn’t excite me as much as I hoped it might, firstly because their choice of genre Indian street food didn’t really seem right for the surrounds.

Most of it is deep-fried and spicy, not the sort of light delicacies you’d ordinarily serve to beautiful city dwellers who sometimes forget to eat dinner.

Like, there’s no fish on the menu, let alone raw fish, the only dish every other Auckland restaurant menu has in common.

Everything tastes good though nothing tastes incredible. The chicken morsels of thigh, fried to be both tender and crisp is pretty moreish if you can handle the curry mayo, that aroma of store-bought curry powder being something of a polariser.

I also liked the vada pav, a street snack I discovered a few weeks ago at Mumbaiwala and was going to try to recreate at home before looking at the recipe which is deceptively complicated for something which is essentially a potato burger.

Sunset’s version was tamer, but still good (I mean, who’s going to complain about carb-on-carb?) though when I ordered another round of them later in the night they’d slipped a little, that potato pattie more like mash than hash, possibly a sign the kitchen was under pressure.

Still, with some sour yoghurt and mango chutney it tasted good, and was a welcome cold refresher among all those other hot spicy mouthfuls.

The lamb skewers were probably the best thing on the menu juicy and heavily spiced, they were served on buffalo curd and went down a treat if, again, feeling a little too common next to the impressive cocktails they were sitting alongside.

You should start with one of those house cocktails which are elaborate and special, and there is a good list of wines and beers if you’re still thirsty after that.

The staff are warm and friendly, with the odd exception, but it’s not quite like being at a proper restaurant they’re good at taking orders and making you happy but are either too new or too rushed to spend much time telling you about what’s on offer.

You’re best to think of Sunset Bar as an exciting place to meet for a cocktail, where you can’t really go wrong on the drinks menu and where you’ll find some pretty good food, if you remember to order it.