Bliss by name - but that's just about it. Photo / Doug Sherring
Herald on Sunday rating: *
Address: 286 Ponsonby Rd
Phone: (09) 360 6302
Open:Daily 7am-4pm; dinner from 6pm Wednesday-Saturday
Vegetarians:A pizza and a risotto
Wine list: Concise to the point of abruptness
Sound check: As quiet as the grave
Watch out for: The exit
Bottom line: How does this place survive?
In naming a restaurant, it seems to me, it is best to under-promise so you can over-deliver. Calling your place Bliss (as opposed to say Luigi's or Mekong or Pasta) seems like asking for trouble.
And the fact is that Bliss was an experience so spectacularly devoid of
bliss that I fancy a case could be made that its name constitutes a breach of some advertising guideline or other.
It's not as if we were expecting a lot. The place is, as its hours suggest, one of those daytime cafes that proliferate along that end of Ponsonby Rd. For all I know its salads, sandwiches and breakfast dishes (these last, billed as "seriously late breakfasts" are presumably available at all hours) stack up against the pretty stiff competition in the neighbourhood. But it opens in the second half of the week for dinner and it was an evening meal we were after.
The spare uncurtained room, which is probably quite attractive in the daytime, feels pretty cold and unwelcoming at night, although a carpeted lounge out the back, with armchairs and a gas fire, seems a pleasant place for a glass of wine.
Several people were enjoying it for just that purpose; perhaps they knew something we didn't because we had the dining room to ourselves.
The bloke who appeared to be in charge thought it was enormously funny to tell me that our booking had been cancelled, although the joke fell a bit flat when considered against the background of the empty room behind him. He also had a disconcerting habit of bellowing "easy!" at the top of his lungs whenever we asked for anything. For a while I considered asking him to do my hair in dreadlocks just to see if he would say "hard", but instead I let the Blonde do the ordering.
The Blonde's mate and I had a brief argument over who was having the pork belly (we wanted to order three different dishes) and she won. Lucky me. The crackling was as crisp as blancmange and not much better after she had sent it back. I was feeling smug until I tried my steak, which had been rested far too long and was barely tepid.
The Blonde's tuna was so bad she thought it must have been frozen but when Mr Easy carefully explained to her that freezing fish was a bad idea because it tasted better when it was fresh, she decided that all its faults could be ascribed to the fact that it was hopelessly overcooked. Of the accompaniments - a tangle of noodles for the steak, red cabbage complete with its thick white stalk for the pork, dry rice for the tuna - the kindest thing that might be said is that they came in large servings. And if that pudding had in fact ever been steamed, it must have been a hell of a job to dry it out as thoroughly as they did. The three of us could not get through a shared, single helping.
"That place needs Gordon Ramsay," said the Blonde on the way home. "The chef only had three meals to cook and he cocked them all up."
I smiled as I thought of what Ramsay would say the first time Mr Easy said "easy!"
