Herald rating: * * *
Address: 448 Mt Eden Road
Ph: (09) 623 3450
Wine list: Adequate. Most by the glass
Vegetarians: Pasta, risotto, salads
Watch out for: The iron-ic artwork
Bottom line: Competent.
KEY POINTS:
The concept of irony - indeed the word itself - is a bit like an explosive: in the right hands and precisely deployed, it can be put to creative use, but, indiscriminately applied by the uninitiated, it can wreak havoc.
It doesn't help that a pop singer nominates, as examples of irony, "rain on your wedding day" and getting a fly in your glass of wine, which are not even slightly ironic but, respectively, bad luck and a mild inconvenience. Yet I suspect the battle is long lost. The real meaning is fast becoming of interest only to etymologists, as the word is promiscuously applied to any odd coincidence.
The name of Ironique, the Mt Eden cafe, is not ironic. But it is a rather nice play on words, as you can tell as soon as you walk in. Like the Te Aroha cafe of the same name (there is no connection but they have both been fitted out by Adrian Worsley of Historic Creations), it is festooned with whimsical objets d'art - stuff from the shed, recycled and retooled: lampshades made of oil cans or funnels or paint tins; in one of the loos, a giant pair of bolt-cutters holds in place the handbasin which, beaten into shape from four old shovels, looks like the work of hobbit smithies.
The fit-out and the playfulness of design encouraged me to expect flair and imagination in the kitchen. No such luck.
Ironically, we had been intending to eat at the Eden Cloak Room (just kidding; I wanted to see whether you had been paying attention) but it was hideously crowded, so we fled.
Ironique is a much bigger place than it seems from the street, with a large room out the back and an expansive outdoor area for warmer weather. It's an all-day operation, with breakfast and brunch standards, and a chiller cabinet with salads and pastries and the like. (Oddly, they were still enthusiastically loading this up even though, the waitress told me, little or no more custom was expected and much of the food would be biffed.)
In the evening, the choice is still broad: salads include one of warm winter vegetables, and another of squid and date. There's a pan-Mediterranean, even Middle Eastern, touch to many dishes and a couple of options, including a pasta, for the vegetarians.
The fact that the place was deserted - except for a four-woman meeting of the local Zonta chapter - might have made us pause but we plunged ahead recklessly, ordering along familiar lines: steak for me, salad for the Blonde.
I spurned the heart-friendly eye fillet since I know that the fat along the edge of a good sirloin is one of God's glories. But this steak, at the extreme end of the rare I'd asked for, had been done at too low a heat: the meat was chewy and the fat a grey gristle which I discarded with distaste. The Blonde's salad was a pile of rocket in which the chicken was hard to detect. A curry yoghurt dressing lifted it slightly, but it was a bit tired. We headed for home with a couple of apple tarts, made with ground almonds, which were very nice indeed.
A single customer review on a dining out website rates Ironique as average. Its aggregated score, therefore, is 100 per cent average. I can't argue with that. But it does look much better than it is.
- Detours, HoS
