Rating: * * * * 1/2
Where:Viaduct Harbour
Ph: (09) 356 7249, www.soulbar.co.nz
Wine list: Two pages, mostly local. Full bar.
Vegetarians: Some appetisers, one risotto.
Watch out for: People who have become celebrities by being seen at Soul.
Bottom line: A class act
The French, bless their hearts, have a word for it: l'esprit d'escalier. It refers to the situation in which you think of the perfect witty comeback to someone's remark several moments - or minutes - too late.
The last time I was in Soul, it seized me, this esprit. The waitress asked our table of two males and three females whether the former would like a beer "and you ladies, maybe a cocktail?".
If the Professor and I had had our wits about us, we would have seamlessly slipped into the double act: she - who has, I believe, never tasted beer - would have said: "I'll have eight pints of Speights and a packet of crisps", perhaps punctuating with a profanity or two, and I would have said, "and a very small, very dry sherry for me".
On that - my first - visit to one of Auckland's fabled eateries, we endured indifferent, even abrupt service and some of the food was great while some - I still shudder at the memory of a Caesar salad - was the other kind. It seemed time to give Soul a second chance.
So I settle in on the terrace for a weekend dinner at an hour so early I suspect most of the celebs, who are usually part of the furniture at Soul, haven't got out of bed. I have a celeb of my own in tow, a brother whose bluegrass band was a household name in the 1960s, and he's full of entertaining stories about the resurrected ensemble's tour through pre-Obama America when they received standing ovations and (perhaps because) he avoided mentioning the war.
A longtime green-fingered resident of a Coromandel river valley, he regards fresh-laid eggs and home-grown veges as the finest dining you can get, but he's prepared to stretch a point for the evening. Indeed, he stretches it far enough to encompass Soul's version of a whitebait fritter, which turns out to be a light and eggy concoction, generously slathered with a decadently buttery lemon sauce. It goes down a treat with the Cloudy Bay sav blanc but it is with some reluctance that I trade tastes with him, since my choice is so good: thin-sliced marinated kingfish sprinkled with nutty salmon caviar and shiitake mushrooms.
The menu's spelling of shiitake, one "i" short, sparks a reminiscence about a great Catherine Tate sketch ("you don't want that in soup, do you?") but the dish itself is sensational, its presentation Japanese-inspired, its taste at once delicate and meaty.
The muso orders chargrilled big-eye tuna on a Nicoise-inspired salad (green beans, anchovies, hard-boiled eggs), which seems to impress him mightily. I opt for a eye fillet of beef, perfectly medium-rare and nicely rested, served with small sherry-roasted onions and oxtail dolmades. This last is a smart idea, wrapping the meat ragu in vine leaves in the Greek style but, poorly prepared or undercooked or both, the leaves are dry and thick and unpalatable.
It's a detail which - along with the fact that I had to wander around searching for a waiter so I could order a glass of wine with my main - cost Soul a five-star rating. But this was otherwise seriously good food that restored my recently shaken faith in the Viaduct.
