ALTA Cuisine: Modern bistro Address: 266 Karangahape Rd Drinks: Fully licensed Reservations: Accepted Contact: 022 5143 584 From the menu: Oysters $6ea; mushroom pate toast $7; Brussels sprouts $12; carrot tartare $22; beetroot dumplings $24; beef and mussel $26; squid tentacles $26
For months, when people have asked me where
Still, I’m going to start sending some of these people to Alta, a new restaurant I’ve taken so long to check out that it’s already had time to rethink and reboot the way it operates.
Until now it’s offered a tasting menu only a brave ultimatum which I support in theory, if not in action. Which is to say, a number of times I started to book in and then demurred, deciding on each occasion that I just couldn’t quite face a long parade of dishes followed by a sweet thing I didn’t really feel like. The tasting menu is the best way to showcase a chef, but the worst way to attract a broad audience.
No doubt it’s because of milksops like me that chef Georgia van Prehn has reverted to a la carte. Even if you order just as many dishes as the chef would have given you anyway, the feeling of control shouldn’t be underrated. As it turns out, the menu is so bright and appealing that every dish you don’t choose makes you feel a little heartbreak.
The table next to us obviously had this problem, ordering so much food they were forced to try to offload the surplus to those of us sitting around them. A group on the other side happily accepted the offer and together munched through a couple of unexpected lamb ribs.
The whole interaction was (slightly) less weird than it sounds, in part because the narrow shape of Alta’s room means you’re closer to the person next to you than you are to the one you came with.
The menu is short but special, a list of cleverly cooked seasonal vegetables plus three good-looking meat options and some other bits and pieces. One of these is a seafood platter which seems out of place this far inland usually it’s the expensive stock in trade of a waterfront mega-restaurant, not a youthful K Rd joint whose only view is of the new bike lane.
We weren’t feeling it on this occasion but those people next to us ordered one and it looked great I suppose if I had looked at it longingly enough they would have eventually offered me a crab claw.
Instead we ordered oysters two ways, including tempura with a malt vinegar mayo so good you wanted to order an extra bowl of it to dip everything else in too. Deep frying an oyster may seem sacrilegious, but the mollusc itself is barely affected here, that crunchy cooked batter just lending the slippery star some extra texture and fat.
I’ve got used to throwing mushrooms in with my supermarket order as an inflation buster, but I’ll never manage to create anything half as good as Alta’s mushroom pate toast. It’s an incredible, unmissable dish, bringing the best out of the forest floor in a pale, deep-tasting paste, spread generously on toasted sourdough, topped with pickled slices of ’shroom and a fancy doodle of prune puree on top.
The dumplings are something Alta will become famous for sheets of beet stretched around doughy balls of labneh and sunflower seeds, set in a sauce made with the yoghurt whey, more beetroot and the gloss of brown butter. If that sounds impressive, well, it tastes even better.
Likewise the Brussels sprouts, captured mid-explosion in a deep fryer and heaped with soured cream and a dollop of bright orange caviar.
Nobody ever felt envious of a vegan but if the person next to you ordered the carrot tartare you might feel a few pangs. It’s a unique, delicious dish where the vegetable is retextured and combined with capers and cashews to create something you can’t stop gobbling mouthfuls of.
And it’s not even a plant-based restaurant in fact, the meat dishes are a big part of the experience. Squid tentacles are so simple and unapologetic you feel like you’re in a Spanish fishing village, while the beef is mind-bending served cooked, cold and cubed with pieces of greenshell mussel and a tempura spring onion which looks like an art installation, it tastes nothing like anything, but it works.
The wine is good but the cocktails are spectacular try the salted olive oil martini as a more palatable version of the classic (to me the classic tastes like rocket propellant, but I loved this one).
“It’s a bit different eh,” said the guy who’d been handing out his lamb ribs around the restaurant five minutes earlier, as he paid his bill.
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Advertise with NZME.Yeah, it’s a bit different. But K Rd should be different, and every risk the chef takes here pays off in a big way. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it earlier: Alta is incredible, and you should visit as soon as possible.
