 Veranda Bar & Grill
Toni Mason
279 Parnell Rd, Parnell
Ph: 09-309 6289,
www.vbg.co.nz
Dinner Tues-Sat from 6pm
(bar opens at 5pm), lunch Thurs-Fri
$$$-$$$$
Reviewed in Cuisine Issue 134, May 2009
There isn’t a veranda but there used to be. It was closed in at some stage to form the bar area, which will have seen many nuances in clientele since the 80s when it was a haunt of the pre-crash high-life crowd. That’s history now.
Outdoor stairs climb from a cobbled lane to a loft-style dining room with heavy beams betraying its original life, as a coach house in the mid-1800s. It was given a facelift before reopening in June last year, so our visit in March coincided with gestation period – a good time to meet the new incarnation. The dining room has been lightened, while the bar is now a cocooning chocolatey hue with unchallenging lighting and stools with backs making for sipping in comfort.
Comfort extends to the menu. Head chef Sal Grant, who started at Mikano in the mid-90s under Warwick Brown and was at Italian restaurant Toto before starting here, has put together a range of bistro-style dishes including classics with a modern twist, and touches of New Zealand cuisine with the likes of tuatua fritters on the entrée menu.
Proceedings start with a gift from the kitchen of bread baked daily by chef with varying savoury fillings and some aïoli. Of our entrées, crêpes filled with confit duck and green beans with melted pecorino and topped with a tousled mop of microgreens were generous and pleasing but upstaged by the Hereford beef carpaccio with white asparagus and caramelised figs that had a whisper of spice – all set off with a lattice of horseradish mayonnaise. The menu has since been geared more towards the cooler season, but the no-doubt popular carpaccio remains with a celeriac rémoulade instead.
Another stayer on the menu is New York strip sirloin, a relatively rarely found cut, but one designed for greater flavour. Served with hand-cut fries and béarnaise sauce, I imagine it flies out of the kitchen. The market fish was expertly cooked hapuku – seemingly the fish du jour – on a sweetcorn velouté.
A tender lamb shoulder rack came on deeply flavoured Niçoise vegetables (think zucchini and tomatoes) with a lively version of bagna cauda. Named from the Italian for “hot bath”, this delicious sauce of olive oil, butter, garlic and anchovies is more usually seen as a dip to add verve to batons of raw vegetables. Here it was a brilliant twist on the typical accompaniments to lamb.
Our bright and polished waitress proved to be totally knowledgeable on the food and wine, offering advice easily. There are apparently 210 wines on the list, 65 available by the glass. Who’s counting? But there was a great range to
choose from.
A coconut and lime cheesecake came with mango and mint salad, cutting the richness nicely, and the selection of house-made sorbets made for a happy finish.
Comfort can again be found in the bill. In a nod to these straitened times, mains range from $28.50 to $34 (for the steak) – which seems highly reasonable for food allowing no room for quibbling. Well-executed bistro dishes with a smattering of Mediterranean influences and flavourful flourishes – this is the sort of food that could almost make you forget about the price
Sunday Sep 28, 2008
By Peter Calder
Review - NZ Herald
VBG uses mirrors to make the most of a difficult space. Photo / Herald on Sunday
Herald rating: * * * *1/2
Address: 279 Parnell Rd
Ph: (09) 309 6289
Open: Dinner Tuesday to Saturday; lunch Thursday & Friday
Wine list: Excellent. Hidden treasures and intelligent advice
Vegetarians: One entree, one main
Watch out for: The $6.50 sorbets
Bottom line: Why cant all meals be like this?
The blonde says that I'm not to mention the bad experience we had when we last ate here So instead, I'll ask: Why can't all meals be like this?
Eating out, like any other field of experience, is proof of the inescapable truth that 90 per cent of everything is done badly. At VBG they do it well and they make it look easy. Before the 1987 sharemarket crash this Parnell institution was the dining room of those barely post-pubescent twits who lunched on Bolly. Since then it has been through hard times, one evening of which I was unfortunate enough to share with them.
Three months ago, it was reborn as a slick, smart operation that does all the basics right and all the hard stuff brilliantly. It's been a long time since I had such an unassumingly perfect meal. At least some of the credit for that has to go to manager Philip Sturm, who, as the man who set up Cibo and the late, lamented Ottos, knows a thing or two about running a good dining room.
It's hard to do much with the unfortunate design - the room is cantilevered on huge diagonal beams, which is where it gets its name - but the clever disposition of mirrors adds to the sense of light and space and the ambience is pleasant. We had brought along one of the Blonde's mates who has, poor thing, shared some pretty tragic dining experiences with us. Let's just say that this evening more than made amends.
Because we were eating early and the place hadn't begun to fill up, we were served by maitre d' Daniel Finlayson, a relaxed but very helpful host, whose comprehensive, unpretentious explanations made ordering a breeze.
The menu, the work of head chef Sal Grant (from Toto), preserves VBG classics such as a main of bangers (sorry, Pokeno pork sausages) and mash and an entree of tuatua fritters. I bagsed the latter, which were divine: light, delicately flavoursome fritters with a tangy clam aioli and an accompanying salad of cress laced with warm cucumber shavings.The Blonde was very impressed by a salad of wine-poached pear and red onions with generous lumps of excellent gorgonzola and caramelised walnuts, and her mate drooled over pappardelle with mushroom and truffle oil.
The dishes had in common a clean simplicity: the gentlest of expert touches was deployed on first-class ingredients to create flavours that were full without being dense. The same approach was evident in the mains: a superb leg of duck, twice cooked, on white beans, a delicate variation on the hearty French classic, the cassoulet; salmon wrapped in paper and baked (ergo steamed) with Asian greens; and the Blonde's gnocchi made with red peruperu potato, incompletely pureed so as to preserve its texture, and lapped with a cheese sauce of surpassing lightness.
Add smart twists on pavlova and apple pie for desserts, and some thoughtful and attentive wine-matching and it was pretty much a flawless performance. My only niggle: small sorbets before the main course were charged for even though not ordered - a first in my experience. Otherwise, it's great to salute VBG's return to form. The Blonde's mate is still smiling.
- Detours, HoS
REVIEW: NZ Herald, Viva, Wednesday June 18, 2008
By Ewan McDonald
Herald rating: * * * *1/2
Address: 279 Parnell Rd
Ph: 309 6289
Web: www.vbg.co.nz
Open: Tue-Sat
Cuisine: Bistro
From the menu: Pan-fried chicken livers, herb-crumbed field mushroom, pancetta and shallot jus $18.50; Twice-cooked duck, white bean cassoulet, baby spinach $33; Passionfruit curd trifle, peaches, sherry jam, pavlova straws $15
Vegetarian: Dishes on menu
Wine: Left of centre goodies
"This is the best meal I've eaten in a long, long time," asserted Jude, noshing her gnocchi. She's spent the past six weeks noodling in Hong Kong, hiking in the Scottish Highlands and driving a tiny Fiat across Italy to road test la cucina: that's praise.
The vote of confidence in Kiwi cuisine was good; not just that she'd enjoyed her evening but that this restaurant had enthused, excited. It is a place with something to prove.
VBG was born in and of the early 80s, haven of the brokers and thrusters, many of whom became the broken and busted of October '87.
For almost 25 years it has thrived, dived, revived and survived. Several times.
Walking the dogs down Parnell Rd recently, some action at the place caught my eye - action of the painting, hammering, plumbing kind.
"It's our first night," said the nice man who took our coats and gave us the menu last week.
That painting, hammering and plumbing has moved one of Auckland's nicer dining rooms into 2008 while preserving its heritage. Other developers might take note.
The man returned. He looked familiar, because he was: Hans Hoeflich has graced and favoured Auckland entertainment for a couple of decades, notably the early days of Cibo. His wine list for VBG owes a little to familiar names (Mt Difficulty pinot noir) and a little more to off-kilter discoveries like subtle, discreetly unfolding Crater Rim pinot noir from Central Otago.
Sal Grant, who began at the lamented, once wonderful Otto's, continues VBG's long-running theme of stylish, witty and upmarket comfort food. A tight menu, just six entrees (one vego) and six mains (ditto).
I began with grunty beef-cheek pappardelle, close relation to the wild boar pasta lapped up in Italy lately, with some vege notes that extended and rounded the dish: broccolini florets, wedges of baked ricotta, slivers of artichoke.
Other pleasures beckoned. Bangers 'n' mash. What better on a freezing night? Grant sources corpulent, succulent pork sausages from Pokeno, on creamed potato. Wasn't quite so sure about the silverbeet and onion confit; it tasted a tad caramelised. Jude disagreed.
Her salad - a pear, poached in white wine, red onions sprinkled with balsamic, gorgonzola, caramelised walnuts - was a cameo. Each taste and texture contributed; each knew its place.
We are back where we came in. Jude's main, "Maori gnocchi with charred beetroot, toasted macadamias, three-cheese veloute". You've gotta love the concept: a modern Kiwi rendering of Milan's gnocchi, walnut, four-cheese sauce. Each crosses the equator to become purple heritage potatoes, Downunder nuts, and Aotearoan cheeses rather than gorgonzola, mozzarella (beetroot? Well, we put that on our burgers).
Extracting the proverbial from a culinary classic is one thing: creating a new dish from the bones - or rather carbs - of the original, one that stands in its own right, is quite another.
These are sizeable meals. There was room to share a sweet, thick crème brulee.
IN THIS reincarnation of VBG, service is friendly, well paced and every question answered. Food was intelligent, familiar yet interesting, carefully and boldly executed. We made a new friend from the wine list and weren't affronted when the bill arrived.
Thought, care, professionalism. There is a clever restaurateur behind the scenes of VBG, and if you look at the staff's training grounds, those early days of Cibo and Otto's, you can join the dots and find the answer: Philip Sturm.
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