Jesse Mulligan Auckland Restaurant Review: Gigi Is Ponsonby Rd’s New Bistro On The Block

Expect high energy, loads of heart, and a scotch fillet with lashings of butter. Gigi’s unique vibe has arrived in Ponsonby.

Gigi co-owner Luke Dallow told Newstalk ZB recently that he’d employed AI to do lots of the work on his new restaurant.

“If you’re not using it, you’re an absolute mug and you’re going to be left behind,” he told The Panel. “I created a menu. I threw it through AI. I said, ‘give me the recipes, give me the menu costings, give me the order sheets’. That would take me like two days to do normally. It did it in 25 minutes. Amazing. And I double checked that, triple checked it, and it was absolutely correct.”

You might expect me to hate this, but I’m all for it. What Luke’s talking about saving here is the grunt work: the lists and the formatting and the long division, which, let’s be honest, is not the reason people decide to get into hospitality. If he can save time on this stuff and give himself more hours to be out there doing what he’s best at, that’s the perfect use case for artificial intelligence.

He could have perhaps written the physical menu himself. AI chatbots are good at bad writing and bad at good writing, and their work is easy to spot (chicken liver pate is one of four dishes on the menu described as “bold”; tuna is “clean, sharp and addictive”). To double check, I ran Gigi’s menu through an online detection system, which registered it as 57% AI-generated.

Should we care? Well, you can make up your own mind. My view is that as someone who’s worked so hard to create a successful restaurant, the owner may, with this menu, be giving the false impression that he isn’t taking the food seriously. In fact, it’s just that he isn’t taking the writing about the food seriously, but not everyone will understand the distinction.

Every time a great restaurant closes down (farewell, Candela! Farewell, Bar Celeste!) I take a moment to say a prayer of thanks for the restaurateurs who are still doing their thing. We are lucky to have Luke (and his business partner Thane Kirby) opening this restaurant, because we all want to live in a city with a vibrant Ponsonby Rd, even if we can’t often afford to visit Ponsonby Rd ourselves. And it is tough out there. They told us “survive ‘til 2025”, but it’s feeling quite hurty until at least 2030.

Adding to the atmosphere is house music, which is played full-time, at a substantial volume. If that sounds like a bit of you, fantastic.

The food is good, with a couple of standouts. I loved the scotch fillet at Ponsonby Road Bistro and Gigi does its own version that is just as good: loads of butter, a scorchingly browned surface, and though slightly under the medium-rare promised, it didn’t matter a bit. It came with broccolini, hot fries and a red wine jus to pour over everything.

A lot of love had been poured into the risotto, which was saffron-yellow and hid big chunks of crayfish flesh – “one hundred grams!” according to the proud restaurant manager, who is very good at his job and more than makes up for the occasional uncertain service moment from his team.

I liked the tuna tartare, served with prawn crackers and a very subtle wasabi cream. The prawn cocktail was a bit underpowered until we found the dressing at the bottom of the martini glass. An eggplant cannelloni was a welcome, tasty starter, even if the pasta was well overdone.

I think this place will either be for you or it won’t, and the food is strong enough that it won’t make much of a difference either way. Prices are pretty reasonable by modern standards. I hope Gigi becomes as iconic as Ponsonby Road Bistro was in its prime and, if it doesn’t, we can’t blame Luke and Thane, who are putting in plenty of heart and energy at a time when both are in short supply.

GIGI

Cuisine: Bistro

Address: 165 Ponsonby Rd, Ponsonby

Reservations: Accepted

From the menu: Prawn cocktail $23, eggplant cannelloni $22, tuna tartare $26, scotch fillet $44, crayfish risotto $45

Rating: 16/20

Score: 0-7 Steer clear.8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss.13-15 Good, give it a go.16-18 Great, plan a visit.19-20 Outstanding, don’t delay.

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