Auckland restaurant review: Eyeing the menu at Saxon + Parole and drinks list

Sumptuous interiors at Saxon+Parole restaurant in Commercial Bay. Photo/Babiche Martens

A Commercial Bay steakhouse does a bloodily perfect venison and quite a lot of vege, writes restaurant critic Kim Knight.

Remember when you had to lie on a bed to do up the jeans that compressed your stomach flatter than a cheese slice?

This week, I am grateful to the chemist who invented Lycra, the Japanese textile experts who first incorporated it into denim and the fashion designers who turned that cloth into acceptable midweek office wear.

This week, if I hadn't worn stretchy jeans, my dinner at Saxon + Parole might have killed me.

My mother always maintained my eyes were bigger than my belly. Five years as the Canvas restaurant critic and I have totally proved her wrong but, every so often, even my capacious stomach must admit defeat.

Floor to ceiling gorgeousness at Saxon+Parole. Photo/Supplied

Saxon + Parole dished me up the biggest and most delicious hunk of venison I've half-eaten. Two gleaming rib bones poked up from the enormous blobs of barely dead meat. The rack had been cooked bloodily perfectly and sliced to reveal that level of gleaming rareness that makes your mouth tingle and your salivary glands ache. I know it's terribly unfashionable to eat meat but that rack of venison invoked something so primal it should have come with a censor's note.

Instead, it came with kale, celeriac puree and pickled cherries ($42). Kale is the steak of the vegetable world - robust and iron-laden, the perfect green to the protein's red. Sometimes I think pickled stuff is just an exercise in ticking a box but, in this dish, the cherries were the juicy brightness that readied the palate for the next bite of Bambi.

The crudites platter at Saxon + Parole features 16 different vegetables. Photo/Supplied

I'm sorry. I know some of you are vegetarians. You should order the crudites ($28), in which 16 different garden staples are served raw, pickled, grilled, salted, preserved, baked and fried with three very tasty dips.

This is one of those dishes that will make you feel good about your life choices (especially if your life choices used to have four legs and a beating heart). The vegetables offer a light and interesting shared starter; loads of texture and an incredible amount of flavour in the most unassuming of places. A ramekin of babaganoush looked like a sickly mud pool but the taste was so wonderfully smoky. Sunflower tahini was unashamedly garlicky and muhammara, the spicy red pepper dip that originates from Syria, may be my new favourite thing to slather on carrots.

If you're going to eat meat, you can't be too squeamish. That means ordering the bits that you might otherwise associate with boarding schools, gentlemen's clubs, and Grandma's house in the 1960s. I'm talking about marrow, tartare and offal. The beef tongue arrived heavily criss-crossed with hot grill marks. It broke softly and, spread on crispy toast, was like a very rich paté. Flat-leafed parsley and a dollop of yoghurt was not just for decoration - the respectively bitter and sharp flavours brought the entire dish to life ($24).

A selection of oysters at Saxon+Parole. Photo/Babiche Martens

In case you were wondering, there is kai moana. A lot of it on something called a "seafood tower" and individual oysters from all over the place - your waitperson will bring you the list and then clip the ticket according to availability. It's a lovely piece of theatre but you are probably here for the steak. (Also the OMG buttermilk mash, which requires a whole other level of Lycra but is totally worth it.)

James had the wagyu bavette ($48). It's a thinnish flank cut and, allegedly, the bit that butchers prefer because it has the most flavour. We're so used to lauding meat that "melts in your mouth" that sometimes I think we've forgotten the pleasures of chewing a superbly seasoned and seared steak. Icecream should melt; cows, not so much.

For the record, it is a more petite dish than the venison which, despite off-loading half of it to James, had left me too full for pudding. I have it on excellent authority that the pecan pie ($12) had been darkly caramelised and was far superior to insipid, sugary versions he has had elsewhere.

When Saxon + Parole opened, it was described as a "modern steakhouse from New York". When I googled the parent restaurant this week, I discovered it was permanently closed. It has been a brutal 12 months for restaurants here and even worse for those overseas. Book for the venison, book for the 16 different garden vegetables but mostly, just book - if not here, then somewhere else. We don't know how lucky we are.

Saxon + Parole, Commercial Bay, 7/21 Queen St, Auckland. Ph (09) 869 7146. We spent: $250 for two.

SAXON & PAROLE DRINKS LIST

How superb that the S&P people have a franciacorta available by the glass. The Majolini "Electo" Franciacorta Brut is fizz from the Province of Brescia, produced using the traditional Champagne method from grapes grown within the region of Franciacorta in Italy. It's not commonly seen around these parts. So it's rather cool to see it. It's also groovy to see a really diverse, "by the glass" menu featuring superb sauvignon, groovy gruner veltliner (blank canvas), soave (made from an Italian grape called garganega) and TWO pinot blancs, from Mt Edward and Akitu. It's boosted with four fantastic chardonnays (Black Barn, On Giants Shoulders, Land of Saints and Muddy Water) and four pinot noirs (Mt Edward, Harakeke Farm, Dog Point and Rocky Point), alongside zinfandels, syrahs and exotic blends aplenty. Plus, they've got a "coravin" list featuring (among others) assyrtiko, chenin blanc and fumé blanc, sagrantino, montepulciano and cabernet franc. The bottle list is impressive, it spans the globe and, while they'll definitely be a workout for your wallet, they're absolutely worth exploring.
— Yvonne Lorkin