From Melbourne to Auckland, MoVida's anchovy and tomato sorbet tapas. Photo/Babiche Martens
From Melbourne to Auckland, MoVida's anchovy and tomato sorbet tapas. Photo/Babiche Martens
Melbourne tapas legend Frank Camorra has opened an Auckland outpost of MoVida. Canvas magazine restaurant critic Kim Knight delivers her verdict.
In their own words: "MoVida Auckland will celebrate the best possible seasonal New Zealand produce to showcase and celebrate Spanish food culture and flavours."
First impressions: So! Much! Room!My enduring, pre-pandemic memory of the original Melbourne MoVida is a cheek-to-jowl affair where the next table's tapas could easily be mistaken for your tapas. No risk of that in the old Ostro space in Britomart's Seafarers Building. Step out of the dark elevator into a light-filled dining room with enormous Waitematā-facing windows. If you can only book a high leaner, don't fret - the stools have backs and the tables are solid.
In the kitchen: Josh Shields (ex-Ostro) is head chef but, on both of my recent visits, founding owner and chef Frank Camorra was over from Oz and scrutinising every plate.
On the floor: The MoVida team works like a well (olive) oiled machine. Fun, friendly and knowledgeable, floor staff were fast with our food - and even faster to remove empty plates. If you're coveting another spoonful of the verdant tarragon sauce that comes with your kingfish and jamon skewers, don't dally.
The menu: Plan multiple visits, because it's impossible to do justice to all those tapas AND the paella especially when you also want the raciones, and in particular the broccoli, the oyster mushrooms (with a raw egg yolk and little potato straws). Also, the braised tripe because you've been told it's the chef's mother's recipe and who doesn't love a chef's mother's cooking? A note about those tapas: They're priced per portion and, structurally, not really built to share. The signature smoked tomato sorbet with a single sultry anchovy is served on a "crouton" so thin that if you held it up to the light you could still see a shipping container. Best consumed in a minimum of mind-bendingly cold-crispy-salty mouthfuls.
Raw elegance - MoVida's "tartar" tapas. Photo/Babiche Martens
Best bite #1: The pāua tasted like a rockpool warmed by a driftwood barbecue. The crayfish croquette was dreamily decadently crayfishy. A calamari sandwich, hot with jalapeno, is surely destined to become Auckland's next big (small) slider thing. I loved them all, yet none so much as the tartar. Layers of wasabi-spiked almond cracker, juicy and irony beef with pickled kohlrabi created something utterly transcendent. Elegant and raw; Espana in a single bite.
Best bite #2: Consider the jerusalem artichoke. Roasted whole and split in half, insides scooped and pureed with (I think?) pork fat, which is then stuffed back into that roasted shell, plopped with salmon roe, dusted with something dry and green and then balanced on a square of patterned paper evoking Moorish tiles, which is, in turn, placed on a coaster-sized round of wood. The alcachofa is $12 a piece, but what price bliss? Order two and make all that work worth the chef's while.
The jury's still out: Tripe is one of the few bits of the cow my mother never cooked. With no baked-in mouth-memory to draw on, its flabby, spongy texture shocks me every time. MoVida's tripe is braised with sherry, chorizo and chickpeas, but I still felt like I was chewing on a dishcloth. With apologies to Mr Camorra's mum, I am not converted.
Harbour-facing windows flood MoVida Auckland with light. Photo/Babiche Martens
On the side: Nobody in their right mind orders a trough of rice as a "side" but the tapas and raciones are so appealing, paella ends up as an afterthought. "Arroz al horno" starred pull-apart tender duck and a great textural shift between rice and chickpeas (homemade sausage, sadly, tasted like it had been added late, rather than infused into the process). Baked rice is delicious, but we had definitely ordered too many tapas to do this enormous dish justice.
Dessert: On our first night, we ran out of time; on the second, we ran out of room. The less - or more - greedy might consider churros, flan, and a Basque tart filled with candied kūmara and served with buffalo curd icecream.
Perfect for: Tapas for two; paella for the full complement of friends and whānau.
How much: Tapas, $8-$24 each; sharable raciones (patatas bravas, lamb backstrap, braised beef cheek et al) $14-$45; paella $90-$105.
You may wish to invest in one of those grip strengtheners, do a few bicep curls and hoist a few kettle bells before your booking at MoVida. Why? Because when you're handed the nine-page drinks list, it's gonna be very embarrassing if you're not strong enough to hold it.
Kicking off, there are an impressive 17 wines by the glass, ranging from an aromatic little $14 albarino to a $36 flute of Veuve Cliquot rosé.
All the wines are listed alongside their region or appellation — so scanning the drinks list is a great way to get your head around the vast number of areas in Spain where great wines are produced. So if you didn't know your rioja (ree-oh-hah) from your Ribera del Duero or your Rias Baixas (ree-ass-by-shass) from your Bierzo (be-ear-tho) or Barcelona (bar-theh-lone-ah) then this list is an excellent place to start. Throw in Penedes (pay-nay-dez), Jerez (hair-eth) Jumilla (who-me-ah), Valdeorras and Catalunya and it's a party.
In addition to sections for sparkling, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, rosé, orange wine, riesling, the pinots (gris, grigio, noir and blanc), reds, sherry and sweet wine, the by-the-bottle list funnels you into favourite Spanish varietals like mencia (men-thea), tempranillo (temp-ran-ee-yo) or garnatxa (gar-nutch-ah).
Think selecting a gin and tonic is simple? MoVida has 15 combos to choose from. Plus there's cocktails aplenty, 25 whiskies and single malts and more aperitives, eau de vies, digestives, bitters and liqueurs than you can shake a sombrero at. Magic.
