You’ll find cocktails and charisma at Ponsonby’s chic new cocktail spot.
This restaurant is the sequel to Omni, a restaurant which everybody loved to bits but which didn’t last long before closing. Happily, we soon got word that the charismatic owners were taking over the ground floor of The
It should have been a simple process to close one restaurant on Dominion Rd and open another in a brand-new building in Ponsonby, but then a neighbour objected and Juno’s licence was delayed for months. Over that time, they served coffee and breakfast while anticipation for their night-time offering reached fever-pitch. And at last they are open for dinner, to the delight of the entire city minus, presumably, that one person who’s been holding things up.
They cooked all sorts of things at Omni but they’ve changed their approach here, offering just a short list of snacks. This reflects new priorities from the owners, who now seem as excited about their cocktail list as the menu, and though it is disappointing for a food reviewer looking for things to write about, I have to admit the lack of main courses really lightens things up: it’s much easier to feel like you’re in an episode of Sex and the City when there isn’t a guy sitting next to you eating an entire lamb shoulder.
So let’s take a quick look at the drinks list, which really is worth a visit in its own right. Cloudy Bay Pelorus is for most people indistinguishable from champagne, and it’s offered here for $16 a glass (though if you are in the mood for the French stuff Juno has followed The Wine Room’s lead and chosen Ruinart, the world’s first champagne house, as their standard pour).
They have a very appealing list of cocktails and though I wasn’t particularly in the mood for hard liquor I ordered their version of a margarita so I could tell you something about it. This drink is everywhere now, usually with a bit of spice, but it is a different drink here - painstakingly clarified so the cocktail is clear coloured and distilled to the essence of its ingredients, including charred jalapeno tequila and agave. That drink reminded me of the great days of Boxer, a bar-slash-chemistry-lab in Parnell, which was part of the Pasture empire and is now sadly missed. As at Boxer, you don’t need to know the details of their techniques in order to appreciate the love and care that’s been put into it.
Service at Juno is warm and kind, and the staff are as stylish as the customers. The mood is “grown up Ponsonby cocktail bar”, until somebody bangs their head on a low-hanging lamp, which happens with surprising frequency.
We began with a “gilda”, a selection of piquant treats skewered and served as a mouthful. Anchovy is the canonical ingredient but as at Blue down the road, Juno replaces it with a green-lipped mussel, which works. They also include a sundried tomato, a sliver of cured pork and a guindilla pepper. To my personal taste, gildas are more enjoyable to look at than to eat but this was a lovely execution of the genre.
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Advertise with NZME.The only certainties in life are death and taxes, and the only certainties in Auckland restaurants are raw beef and raw fish. Both are here, served in interesting, moreish ways and we can’t really complain about menu monotony if we all keep ordering the same thing. The fish dish here is interesting - cold snapper sliced thin like prosciutto and layered over a “capsicum rouille” (think red pepper aioli), sitting on something that can only really be described as a small hash brown. A few flakes of sea salt are scattered over the top, emphasising that this is all about fresh snapper, sparely seasoned.
There’s a hash brown with the chicken liver parfait too - again there’s a nice contrast between warm/crunchy and cold/smooth, though the parfait has another lovely surprise: a tiny salad of pickled carrot and daikon balanced on top. There are precious few fresh vegetable moments on the menu so we appreciated this one (nobody promised us a rounded meal but even KFC offers a side of coleslaw).
The signature “sando” was out of stock when we visited so I can’t review it for you, I’m afraid. But the beef tartare is good; it’s served with house-cooked potato chips making it the third dish on a small menu to lean on fried potato. It’s also an example of fusion delivered by a master chef: umami is supplied by XO rather than Worcestershire sauce, richness from pork fat-rich Nduja rather than egg yolk and olive oil, spice from Calabrian chili rather than mustard. It ends up being a French-Italian-Cantonese mash-up where all three work in concert rather than competition.
This isn’t somewhere to come for a birthday celebration dinner, but if you’re looking for a birthday drink spot it’s perfect. Owners Jamie and John have narrowed and refined their offering since Omni, filling a hole Ponsonby didn’t know it had. Thousands of grateful Aucklanders have tried out Juno’s cafe service; I expect they’ll be queuing up to sit down here after dark.
JUNO
Cuisine: Bar-bistro
Address: 20 Williamson Ave
Reservations: Not accepted
Drinks: Fully licensed
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Advertise with NZME.From the menu: Gilda $9, raw snapper $11, chicken liver parfait $10, steak tartare $28, prawn cocktail $20
Rating: 17/20
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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