Toto Restaurant, Auckland City

Toto's aim is to be a "restaurant and social club with depth". Picture / Babiche Martens

Herald rating: * * * 1/2

Yum ciao. You've gotta love the chutzpah of that name for an Italian light-lunch list. Emma did. "How will the people who choke over menus with misplaced apostrophes and too many r's in mozzarella cope?"

"I'm sure the Italians have a word for it," I said. "They do," she replied with authority - six night classes. "Bragadoccio."

Antonio Crisci, who created Toto, came from Naples and named the place after his city's favourite son - Antonio de Curtis, hero of 106 movies, known as Toto.

Crisci pitched Toto as "the first Italian restaurant in Auckland where tradition became a solid fusion with the modern cuisine of Italy". But all things must pass, as a philosopher with the misfortune to be born Greek and not Italian said.

Crisci has sold Toto to Sergio Maglione, his nephew and the chef for seven years, and Glen Giroux, sometime civil engineer, other times waiter at the RAC gentlemen's club on Pall Mall. I asked the French-Canadian partner what's planned.

"Sergio and I have been working hard at maintaining the bourgeois spirit and flair for wine and food that Antonio created from nothing," he said, noting that Sergio had been brought up in a culinary home, and taught to cook by his mother and other chefs before creating his own food style. Giroux's tastes include music and art-house films.

There will be innovations. "From next month we will host Tuesday and Wednesday-night movies and dinners - a set menu, a glass of wine tailored to the meal and a fabulous vintage or art-house film in the Montecristo Room."

Fridays, it's jazz and pasta; Thursdays, flamenco guitar; Saturdays, opera.

Maglione and Giroux are passionate about their venture. "Sergio and I spent many days discussing the possible future for Toto and its amazing building. We are convinced we can create a restaurant and social club with depth - appealing to both the educated and mature food- and wine-loving, and trailblazing youth."

Emma is educated and I am mature so we must be the target market. Glasses of flinty pinot grigio for her and robust Montalcino for me, we divvied up ripieno, filled and baked bread sliced into what we saw as a culinary pun on sushi. Another slice recalled bacon-and-egg pie - or cold pizza.

We shared a pepper salad, enjoying the tastes and textures of oils and onions and glistening red vegetables. I proffered her duck prosciutto. "It doesn't taste like duck," she said. "I think that's the point," I answered, snaffling the parmesan and truffles.

Insalata invernale, aka winter salad, arrived top-heavy with iceberg, which didn't feel particularly wintry. We'd ordered small plates so were surprised when the final round arrived, mains-size: rib-sticking gnocchi with boar for me; pink-inner, seared rounds of tuna for her. This was the third or fourth dish that came with caramelised onions, now slightly bitter.

"Do you think," asked Emma, "this is a signature?"

"Not sure," I replied. "I think that line about 'tradition, fusion and modern cuisine' needs to be the next thing that the boys look at. This is solid trattoria food."

"At designer prices," she interjected.

Is it going to be a place where Bright Young Things meet or a serious restaurant? we wondered. Jury's out.

Address: 53 Nelson St City
Phone: 302 2665
Web: www.totorestaurant.co.nz
Open: Mon-Fri midday-late, Sat-Sun 6pm-late
Cuisine: Italian
From the menu:
Prawns wrapped in speck, cauliflower and truffle puree, fennel crunch $21.50
Spiced lamb rump with braised lentils, baby roast vegetables, pancetta crisp $34.50
Walnut torta caprese with white chocolate gelato $13.50
Vegetarian: Admirably
Wine list: 12 pages from champagne to cigars