Geoffrey Chunn in the kitchen of Delicious in Grey Lynn. Photo / Chris Skelton
Herald rating: * * * *
Address: 472 Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn
Phone: (09) 360 7590
Open: Tuesday-Wednesdays 4pm-9pm; Thursday noon-9pm; Friday noon-10pm; Saturday 6pm-10pm
Vegetarians: At least half the menu
Watch out for: The smile of welcome
Wine list: Good range, all in by-the-glass options
Bottom line: A change for the better
For half of the 1980s, Fed Up on Ponsonby Rd, near the Summer St corner, was my local. It described itself as an "eatinghouse" and it served, on mismatched crockery at motley tables, the kind of food you would be cooking at home if you could be bothered.
They gave you tumblers for BYO wine.
For reasons I don't quite understand, the Fed Up species is extinct now: a neighbourhood joint, of the sort found everywhere in Europe where, by careful prix fixe menu planning, they get a wholesome and tasty meal on the table almost as cheaply as you could do it at home. I dream of a place like that at the top of my street. It would be my local.
The Blonde and I thought we'd found a local when Delicious opened a few years ago. It was cheap and cheerful and the pasta was perfect. They didn't take bookings, but when the Gypsy Tea Room opened across the street you could have a glass or two and they'd give you a wave when a table came free. It was ideal.
But each time we went - and we went a few times - the tone of the welcome lowered. Andy, the co-founder, in plain sight in the open kitchen, looked more lugubrious by the week.
His partner, Alana, presided at the front of house and was always as welcoming as a bull terrier with haemorrhoids.
Here were two people in charge of the most successful restaurant in town and they were perpetually bloody miserable.
For a while, the Blonde and I treated it as something of a joke. But, after a while, being treated like a crab louse started to get up my nose. The end came when the Blonde went in to ask about a table - the place looked one third empty - and Alana bared her fangs and hissed, without explanation, "40 minutes!".
We haven't been for a couple of years but the other night we were passing and I looked in the window. There was no sign of the unwelcoming committee or the kitchen Eeyore so we took a chance.
We were warmly welcomed by a 50-something man who offered to take my coat. The table staff were friendly and obliging (though they had never been the problem) and John Pountney's dishes of handmade pasta and inventive sauces and fillings (such as broad bean, ricotta and mint ravioli; tagliatelle with zucchini, mussels and capers) were as good as ever.
It turns out that the man who took my coat is the new owner, Geoffrey Chunn (first drummer for Split Enz and a founding member of Citizen Band) who has set up daytime operations all over town (including Foodies in Remuera and Benediction in Newton).
Chunn says he has always been a Delicious fan. The signs are good that I'll become one again, now.
The food is fab and the desserts are divine but the prices have moved out of the Fed Up bracket. The dish a Herald reviewer paid $18.50 for last June cost me $26 last week. Cheap eats this ain't. But it's not exactly dear - and it's nice not to feel like I'm causing trouble by just walking in.
