KEY POINTS:
Next to the computer where I peck'n scratch these things is a framed text. It begins, "People ask me: why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?"
For those who haven't happened upon it, it is - or should be - the creed of all food lovers and most cooks. The human condition in 300 words. Google M.F.K Fisher or The Art of Eating.
I don't know if Tony Astle has read it. I do know I am unpardonably late for meeting La Bridget at his restaurant. By the time I have negotiated the Queen St road "works" and the horrors of the Port off-ramp and reached the relative haven of Upper Parnell, the Fragrant One is tapping manicured nails on damask.
That's all you're getting by way of scene-setting today, for we come to Antoine's to appreciate the food. The pleasures of the flesh and/or fowl. Have done since 1973 when Astle, then 22, and wife Beth opened their French-influenced restaurant in an old villa that had been devoted to certain other fleshy pleasures.
Here, some things never change. Bridget browsed the nostalgia menu, which offers dishes that have been around since Rob Muldoon was a regular. Tripe in cream, sherry, onion and green peppercorn sauce; onion soup topped with cheese and grilled; ox tongue simmered in madeira and green peppercorns.
But I was grateful that other things do change. I preferred the Table menu. Inspired by an annual break in France, Astle creates this every season and a specials menu more frequently. He might have been in this game longer than almost anyone else in town but the Old Master is still a contemporary artist.
After bread (just a tad doughy?), either of Bridget's choices could have been torn from a 70s coffee-table Classic French Dishes. Or a Graham Kerr cookbook. Seafood chowder, not quite bouillabaisse, white and orange flesh succulent, glistening. Bridget ooh-ed.
The waiter brought not a tray, but a hefty casserole of oxtail, long, lovingly simmered in red wine. He spooned it on to Bridget's plate. He spooned baby onions and mushrooms. Bridget tasted and Bridget aah-ed.
I remembered what I liked about the 70s, and not just the blonde one in Abba.
If I'm going for contemporary food, I reasoned, go the whole pork-belly. Cauliflower panna cotta? Astle's starter is a poem of blendered cauli, taste and texture of artichoke, underlaid with yellow beetroot. There was a streak of prosciutto too. An acquired taste? I acquired it rapidly and would go back for it.
Some of Antoine's contemporary dishes play on the classics. Take my choice, roasted quail. When the knife splits the little bird, wild mushrooms spill out, their flavour having infused the flesh during cooking.
They tumble into a rich red pomegranate jus, spiced with cinnamon sticks. Chicken chasseur for a new millennium, anyone?
Desserts hark back: retro "designer bread and butter pudding", apple crepes flamed with Calvados. Our spoons met in the middle of a bowl of limoncello posset: warm, sweet, curdled, like egg-nog; another bowl of sweet, caramelised pineapple, tasty dipping things between. Another object-lesson in how this restaurant, with decades of practice, does the little things perfectly.
Like the service. Like the wine. We travelled by the glass, were more than happy with the staff's profferings, felt them considered, where we might have been intimidated by an aficionado's list.
M.F.K Fisher's piece ends, "There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk". As there has been at Antoine's, every night, for more than 30 years. The patron, totting the GST that's still not included on the prices, calls it fine dining. Bollocks. It's superb dining.
Address: 333 Parnell Rd
Phone: (09) 379 8756
Web: www.antoinesrestaurant.co.nz
Open: Lunch Mon-Fri, dinner and supper Mon-Sat
Cuisine: NZ with French undertones
From the menu: Italian sushi with smoked salmon, bell peppers and zucchini on chilled saffron consomme with salmon caviar $22; blanquette of rabbit, veal sweetbreads, mushrooms and baby onions, topped with pastry and baked $40; spiced apple crepes flamed with calvados $20
Vegetarian: Limited choices
Wine: In a word, stupendous
