Auckland restaurant reviewing: Kim Knight tries the level 3 takeaway menu at Cotto, Karangahape Rd

A little buttery cuddle - the famous spinach, goat cheese and sage dumplings are on the takeaway menu at Cotto Restaurant, Karangahape Rd, Auckland. Photo/Kim Knight

Lamb ribs as succulent as a kiss and pasta that's as good as a cuddle - restaurant critic Kim Knight finds comfort at Cotto.

The best man made everybody laugh and the chocolate nemesis cake made everybody swoon.

At the head of the table, the newly-weds had won a lottery. Whānau, friends, food. Tears, laughter, each other. We left the restaurant for a house in the suburbs where the walls dripped art and the party went late. People pressed against people. Singing, dancing, loving.

It was July. In late September, I wondered: Did I dream that?

I was back at that restaurant wearing a mask. Standing on the footpath in my invisible, droplet-free forcefield. It was all so foreign, so out of any normal context, that I didn't recognise a friend and workmate ahead of me in the socially distanced queue.

Cotto Restaurant was my first foray into Covid alert level 3 click-and-collect dining. After a month of eating-at-home austerity, the lamb ribs were as succulent as first love; a salty-oily kiss that evoked a primal reaction deep within my carnivorous belly.

We had those ribs again last week, for no other reason than I remembered they were excellent and it's hard to predict what you'd like for dinner days before you're planning to eat. It's not ideal - one of the great joys of restaurant dining is opening a menu and choosing according to mood and company. But businesses are going to the wall while they wait for vaccination rates to rise, and if we want to clink glasses and argue over the last oyster later, we need to order pork belly with fennel slaw and salsa verde now.

Pork belly and lamb ribs, both $16, from the level 3 takeaway menu at Cotto, Karangahape Rd, Auckland. Photo/Kim Knight

Some cuisines are better suited to a trip in the car. Fries can go soggy. Pizza toppings can slide. Pasta can be reliably reheated and it was probably not that pretty to begin with. Cotto does stonkingly good pasta.

We started with the $16 ribs, grateful for the balsamic sauce that cuts through any fat, and then shared a strip of pork belly (also $16). It was too salty for me, but I would have eaten the fennel slaw by the bucketload. Where was fennel when I was growing up and hating cabbage?

I recently read that Europe is running out of paper to print books and perhaps Auckland is running out of cardboard containers, because there was slightly more plastic packaging than we'd noticed on our first visit.

Mascarpone panna cotta with marsala roasted pears ($10) had been ingeniously set in a takeout coffee cup. It wobbled into my plate, all dark and boozy caramel flavours flooding over the rich, cooked cream. Cotto has perfected the art of very grown-up desserts. Add an order of the chocolate nemesis cake with a salted caramel sauce (also $10) and eat, much later, with a small spoon in front of something intense and subtitled.

During the home-cooked days of level 4, Cotto offered an Instagrammed how-to for its Auckland-famous spinach and goat's cheese dumplings. The instructions confirmed what fans have long suspected: More butter. No, even more butter than that.

Is it still too much butter if it has been sizzled with sage and tastes like heaven and the herbs have gone as crunchy as crisps? Probably. But, also, I have not shaved my legs for 10 weeks. This is a pandemic and the usual societal rules no longer apply. (In my gluttonous defence, the dumplings were absolutely chocka with spinach).

Both of the $22 pasta dishes had also been stained with spinach. A tortellini stuffed with smoked mozzarella was as lush and green as a spring lawn. It, too, was lacquered with butter to achieve the requisite degree of extremely rich. Eat your vegetables AND your feelings.

Maltagliati lamb shoulder ragu - looks messy, tastes great. From the level 3 takeaway menu at Cotto, Karangahape Rd, Auckland. Photo/Kim Knight

I have saved the best until last. Maltagliati lamb shoulder ragu. You might look at this descriptor and think "badly cut pasta in a meat sauce". This would be akin to calling Dr Ashley Bloomfield the Director General of Health while ignoring the video clip of his funky vaxathon dance moves at Cannons Creek, Porirua. In short, this is a dish with hidden depths.

Dig into that verdant al dente pasta to find chunky nuggets of fork-tender lamb and a gently chilli-spiked sauce that pulls it all together without making it all about the sauce. In a contactless world, Cotto's maltagliati is a cuddle in a takeaway container.

Cotto Restaurant, 375 Karangahape Rd, Auckland, cotto.co.nz, ph (09) 394 1555. We spent: $112 for two (but our order would easily have fed three).

ROOM FOR MORE? Some other things Kim Knight ate this week ...

Kingsland Social: The $15 breakfast burger starred two eggs, a piglet's worth of bacon and loads of avocado on warm buns sturdy enough to handle the car trip home. We added an old-school long cream doughnut to the order - squishy fresh deliciousness, with a bonus layer of creme patisserie under the piped whipped cream. (Kingsland Social, 462 New North Rd, Kingsland).

Old-school cream doughnuts (with a surprise filling) from the takeaway cabinet at Kingsland Social, New North Rd, Auckland. Photo/Kim Knight

Banzai Restaurant: The Tardis as a brown paper bag: more and more containers of more and more food emerge until a $42 bento feast has marched across your table and into your karaage chicken-starved heart. Little pottles of matching sauces, big pottles of hot miso; sushi, sashimi and tempura vege. I'd dug the depths of the fridge searching for the kewpie mayo but there was no need, because this was a take-out that anticipated my every need. (Banzai Restaurant, 583 Dominion Rd, Mount Eden)

Tempura vegetables, sushi, sashimi and karaage chicken from a level 3 takeaway bento box special at Banzai Restaurant, Dominion Rd, Auckland. Photo/Kim Knight