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An Auckland restaurant that has survived 40 years of eating trends - and changing almost nothing - is packing up its barbecue and heading for the latest Downtown dining hot spot.
The Angus Steak House's motto of the biggest and freshest steaks, served sizzling on a hot plate,
has kept a clientele, including All Blacks and Springboks, America's Cup sailors, body builders and pop stars coming back for more.
It has operated behind red tartan curtains in the basement of an Albert St building since the Auckland dining-out scene was in its infancy.
Owner Sally Uren recalls: "We'd hear the big footsteps of the police coming down the steps. We were not allowed wine in the restaurant then. Nice people who had come from overseas and were used to having a bottle of wine with their meal had to hide it under the table."
As authority loosened its grip the restaurant became BYO but it was later forced to become fully licensed because its tourist customers did not know what BYO meant.
The liquor licence is the most notable change at the Angus over the years.
Sally's former husband Geoff Uren, now in Australia, was once asked the secret of the Angus outlasting scores of restaurants which had fallen by the wayside.
"I've always claimed I serve the best and biggest steaks in town, and nobody in more than 20 years has come forward to tell me I'm wrong," was the reply.
The Urens decided on a simple formula and the two generations of family operating the restaurant have stuck to it.
The beef is from certified New Zealand Angus cattle and the steaks are big. Diners select a cut from the rack and tell the chef, stationed at the barbecue griller, how they want it cooked ... garlic, peppered, medium rare. There is a salad bar and side dishes.
The steak is served sizzling on a hot plate, the pine tables and chairs are 1960s vintage and the table mat is an A3 diagram showing which part of the bull your steak came from.
Manager Mario Albanese said the restaurant's charm is that "it's friendly, unsophisticated. We don't put stuff on the steak if you don't want it ... sauces and cream. People, especially from Europe, find it difficult to get a simple meal".
That style has over the years drawn a broad range of clientele, from family groups, city professional workers and tourists to British pop stars Donovan Leitch and Leo Sayer, Johnny Briggs, who played the role of Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street, and the late comedian Billy T. James, who was a weekly regular.
The Fridays when diners queued along Albert St for a seat are now just a memory for Sally Uren.
She said that for a long time the Angus had been constrained by a demolition clause within its lease on a building and it's time for the business to try to "reconstruct itself" in a new location.
It is following its business clientele whose offices have moved nearer the waterfront and Britomart.
On Saturday, November 3, the Angus closes at Albert St and reopens on November 6 in specially outfitted premises between Commerce St and a little lane off Fort St, which will be transformed with four bars and restaurants.
The family carefully considered the design of the new restaurant because its regulars told them not to change a thing. They liked the closeness of the barbecue and the tables and the low ceiling.
It looks like a modern restaurant decor at the new Angus in Fort Lane. But Sally Uren promises touches of the old as well as the "theatre of the barbecue". The Albert St barbecue - nearly worn through from scrubbing - will become a wall hanging feature, as will the hundreds of foreign banknotes donated by tourists.
