Shanks with a bit of hoity-toity at Vinnie's

Prue Barton and David Griffith who have sold Vinnie's restaurant in Herne Bay. Picture / Kenny Rodger

What a strange place an empty restaurant is. It feels just like an empty theatre; a room full of props awaiting an audience. It has, says the pixie-faced Prue Barton, pushing aside the French plates and crisp napkins on a table already set at 10.30am in anticipation of the 6pm opening, "a sense of diminished activity. It's sombre. Then when the space comes alive, when you throw a whole lot of people into this, all the bits of the puzzle fit together to make this atmospheric thing."

This atmospheric thing is Vinnie's restaurant, which would be, I once wrote, an Auckland institution if institutions could ever be said to smell of things like papaya chutney and duck confit and stuffed okra. If a room could retain the memory of smell, Vinnie's, in Herne Bay, would smell, too, of paua sausages and chocolate mousse with mint jelly and the famous lamb shanks they haven't dared take off the menu since Barton and her partner, chef David Griffiths, began serving them 16 years ago.

Oh, says Barton, "I wish I'd numbered them. That's one of my biggest regrets." She should, I suggest, although far too late, of course, have put up one of those signs burger chains in the States have saying: Three Million Shanks Sold. That might have been a good idea, or, says Barton, "the Statue of Liberty holding up a lamb shank every time someone got the 100th one. We've sold millions of them."

Sixteen years of shanks and in the beginning - Barton having an extended Proustian moment - the place smelled of fennel fritters and smoked fish hash, and people queued outside to get a table at a tiny joint with peeling walls.

So when I phoned her to ask about coming to see her, I said: "What is this act of treachery?"

She laughed and thought that was a joke. When we sit down at the table in the restaurant, I assure her I wasn't joking. Because, honestly, as if Sydney hasn't got enough fine foodie places without Barton and Griffiths packing up their recipes and the golden retriever called Stan and going to work for Wildfire on Circular Quay. Which is what they are going to do.

She doesn't think she'll tell me how much it costs to buy a Vinnie's. But you suspect that it costs rather a lot to buy an institution. The name has been sold along with the china and the atmospheric thing. "Which is actually really nice for us to think that it's going to carry on. It'd be sad if it suddenly turned into yum cha or a takeaway. It's like handing over the baby."

They handed it over once before, to chef Michael Meredith, while they headed off to Hawkes Bay to run Terroir at the Craggy Range winery. It remained a very good restaurant but "we got some tetchy reviews" - simply, Barton believes, because they weren't there.

Because - and this is the strange thing about Barton's job - she spends every night in the company of people who are, really, strangers and who also regard her as a sort of friend. This is a relationship which I think must be quite irritating, but Barton is made of sterner and more patient stuff. "They love the relationship. They love the connection. I think they just feel that you're so entwined and so part of [a night at Vinnie's]."

See what a traitor the woman is? She does admit that "yes, they do want to get involved in your life, and I'm not sure why. So that can be exhausting. I just think it's because you're part of something special for them, an anniversary, a birthday. You're part of the special bits of their life." And there are those big-noters - which is my word, she would never be so rude - who "do want to be able to say, 'we went to Vinnie's last night and Prue and Dave were there and Prue recommended we drink this great German riesling'."

What ghastly people you must have in your restaurant, I say. She looks a bit shocked at the very idea but then she laughs and says that "we've weeded out most of the ghastly ones". You don't build a successful restaurant business telling tales on customers, but "I'll tell you this story".

It is a story about a truly ghastly-sounding man who turned up on a very busy Friday night with a woman and demanded a table. Barton sat the couple at the bar and gave them a drink. Truly ghastly man immediately spotted a typo in the wine list and announced, loudly, that he had done so. A table - "the worst table in the house" - Barton says, with some relish, came free and the couple were served their meals and "in those days we used to do this big salad thing". This came with little bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar on the side. "We haven't come to Vinnie's to dress our own salad," the man shouted. Barton's response to such manners is to resort to being "excruciatingly gracious", causing the man to shout some more and leave, Barton telling him if he didn't pay she'd call the police. As he left, half the restaurant stood and applauded.

GOODNESS, what drama. "He was a dick, an absolute dick." He thought, she thinks now, "that I was being hoity-toity". I imagine she could be a bit hoity-toity if you behaved badly, but I don't imagine many people do. She says that although a restaurant is like a theatre, she's "not putting on a play. I'm just me".

She did get ever so slightly hoity-toity when I said $200 was a lot of money to pay for a meal. "Well, you see, I disagree with that." Well, it is. It's probably the grocery bill for the week for many families and she says yes, it probably is, but "we were always pitching to ... the top end". It is food for the elite. "I don't call it elite." For the rich, then. "It's definitely pitching to a clientele that are discerning."

When I say "don't you think food's got a bit silly?", she says, "That's a funny question."

This does rather demonstrate what a funny world foodies live in. I ask her if she's a food snob and she says, quite proudly, "probably". Part of her job is dealing with the other snobs, usually men, who "get show-offy" about the wine. "'Oh, this wine's not cold enough'. 'This wine's corked'." Even when it patently isn't, she just removes the bottle and replaces it.

She may be snobby about food but she is not in the least snooty. When you meet her you can see exactly why all of those strangers want to be her best friend. That position is already taken by Griffiths, Barton's husband and the other half of the team which built the institution. I wonder whether they ever get fed up with each other and she says that, no, she doesn't but "I think Dave sometimes might get more fed up with me. Maybe he sometimes feels I'm a tiny bit dominating."

She is tiny all right. But dominating? She's perfectly charming as long as you don't ask silly questions about silly food. Or refuse to mix your own salad.