Herald rating: * * * *
Address: 510 Great South Road, Greenlane
Phone: 09 524 6190
Website: www.theabbeygreenlane.co.nz
Open: Lunch, dinner 6 days. Closed Sunday
Cuisine: Bistro
From the menu: Prawn, grilled mushroom, olives and garlic confit, salad $19; Ginger-marinated chicken, roasted with kumara fondant, bok choy, oyster mushroom schnitzel, cabernet jus $29; Mango quark cheesecake, baked in filo, orange blossom, caramel and macadamia $15
Vegetarian: Dishes on menu
Wine Kiwi: solid on reds, softer on whites
KEY POINTS:
Gastropubs. Frightfully popular with the Poms some years ago. First catch your pub, one that treats beer with the respect it deserves, then find an interior designer, a celebrity consultant ... oh, and a decent chef. Last and most important, the name: The Slaughtered Lamb. The Wilted Codpiece.
Here, a couple of places flirted with pesto on the side of steak'n'chips. Sorry, frites. Can't remember the names. The Newt and Cucumber. The Actress and the Bishop.
We don't do pubs well. Let alone treat beer with the respect it deserves. We do faux-and-hounds English and bog-standard Irish. Don't let the period-plastic bits and bobs obscure the sports screen. That's why the lads come to The Jolly Taxpayer.
At first glance, this week's place looks like a gastropub. While you mightn't give it a second glance, I've eaten at The Abbey (boring name: why not The Inebriated Seagull?) twice lately. It is, as they say in the Michelin, worth a detour.
Staff are young. Interested in the food and wine. Damned enthusiastic. Qualities which are endangered in Auckland, specially the 'burbs.
The look is a worry, English pub fakery, possibly a job lot from a would-be gastropub that went broke in Howick, or the 90s, which is not the same thing. One wall is a wine library, pretty shelves with chalked oenophiliac quotations.
Last, and most important, the chef: Eugene from Moldova, near Russia and down a bit, via Israel and another 123 pages of the atlas. His first appointment as head chef; it will not be his last and those who write rude emails pointing out what I don't know about food should remember they read it here first.
Jude's first encounter with food and staff showed why this place does well. They have made the marvellous deduction that they are there to serve and satisfy the customer. The customer fancied scallop souffle, with walnuts and lemon chutney, but blanched at black pudding sauce. Not a problem, madam, I'll tell chef to leave it out. He did, taking nothing away from an excellent opener.
Ravioli for me. I'd tried chef's take on my earlier Wild Food Challenge visit, where his filling was snails and blue cheese; this time it was smoked mushroom, aubergine and olive. Sounds bland but they're ground to their essences for a sharply flavoured pasta, flashed with dashes of sweet-chili sauce.
Cochon = pig, trio = three ways. This monster main tables a huge slab of belly, a petite port-flavoured sausage, fillet sprinkled with coffee and cardamom. And that's before you find your way to Level 1, the cashew nut-ground mash. A sauce and some vegetable fixin's.
Jude's pasta: bright colours and tastes of vegetable, prawn. Maybe a tad colourful, a couple too many tastes. "He could hold back a little and it would still be an excellent meal," she said, echoing my thoughts about pork to the power of 3.
Dessert. Eugene was offering his special from that Wild menu: jerusalem artichoke, pistachio fluff... my mum would call it a pudding, hibiscus flower. The real thing: a red flower drenched in syrup from other blossoms. Rich. Sweet. Creamy, too. Tints, textures, tastes.
You have to like a place, and a chef, when he quits the kitchen to chat to each table about their meal, at the end of the evening.
Funny thing about that name, though: there's no church within a suburban mile. If you're going to have a gastropub where the Great South Road splits three ways, what about calling it The Harp of Erin?
