Soljans Cafe, Kumeu

Herald rating: * *

The Viva editor, who is of an optimistic nature, said, "Go and have a nice, long summer lunch". So we thought that lunch at a winery might be nice, on a summer's day.

It wasn't actually raining the day we headed out to West Auckland to Soljans winery but it wasn't actually sunny either. And neither was our reception. The staff had failed to record our booking. When I phoned to ask whether we needed to book, I was told it would be a good idea. So I did, but the booking somehow failed to make the book.

The bloke who met us at the cafe door asked whether the name we'd booked under could sound like something else, perhaps? How should we know? The Television Critic got a bit shirty when the bloke said sometimes it was hard to hear names over the telephone. In which case, said the TC, "shouldn't you ask people to spell them?"

In the end the bloke conceded we could have a table. But honestly, why would anyone lie about making a booking? You can imagine they just might if it was a restaurant in New York, say, where you have to put your child's name down at birth for them to get a table on their 21st.

Our table was outside in an area kept safe from the weather by vast pieces of plastic through which you can look at the view. The view is of grass and a Wendy house and a couple of petanque courts.

This is a rather desultory sort of view, on any sort of day, but I was glad somebody else, possibly somebody with a name that sounded a bit like the name I'd booked under, had our indoor table.

Indoors is reminiscent of those vast cafes in museums (the Army one at Waiouru springs to mind): featureless, with horrible cheap-looking tables and chairs and lots of echoing space. Outside the tables and chairs are like the ones you might get at the Warehouse and they had plastic salt and pepper shakers on them. The TC was quite taken by these. He hadn't, he said, encountered anything quite as ugly for a long time. But it's nice, isn't it, to have a conversation piece?

We had a honey of a waiter: bright, bubbly and efficient. She obviously hadn't been told that we were impostors.

The menu at Soljans covers the bases. You can have breakfasty things, lunchy things and things you'd probably rather have for dinner. I had a salad described as a sauteed Tuscan chicken salad with a fresh melon salsa, greens and crispy noodles. It was fine, in a ho-hum sort of way. The TC had the antipasto platter about which he said: "The good thing about it is that there's a lot of it. The bad thing about is that there's a lot of it."

There was no arguing with the fact that there was a lot of it - none of it particularly interesting, or particularly fresh. It had warm mussels and a cold salmon rose, and smoked chicken and dips and bland salami and pickled vegetables and a load of other stuff, including cocktail onions. There is no good thing to do with cocktail onions and no good thing was done with them here. The accompanying bread was stale. I said to lovely waiter: "Um, this bread's stale." She said - and full marks for innovative thinking on the trot here - "Um, I think they dry it a bit".

We shared a white and dark chocolate mousse with those chocolate cigar things which are up there with cocktail onions on the of list of food forms that have no point. The waiter had promised that the dessert wouldn't be dry. The biscuit base was. Perhaps they had dried it a bit.

I have a feeling I won't be pretending to book again.

Address: 366 State Highway 16, Kumeu

Ph: 412 2680

On the menu: Smoked salmon and potato hash cake layered with avocado and cucumber salsa, gherkin mousse, rocket leaf with a smoked lime and honey dressing ($15.50); seared lamb rump served on parmesan polenta accompanied by ratatouille salsa, rocket and garlic crisps ($24.50); raspberry cheesecake on praline base, raspberry coulis and berry compote ($9.95)

Vegetarian: There is something involving pine nuts and feta and filo - isn't there always?

Wine list: It's a winery. You can have whatever you want as long as it's Soljans.

Bottom line: Pop in for a bottle - that's the main attraction.