Auckland shapes cafe lifestyle, and invites envy

Press, 24 May 1988, Page 13

Auckland shapes cafe lifestyle, and invites envy

MAVIS AIREY

samples the

delights of cafe society in Auckland and finds some lessons for Christchurch restaurateurs.

Why does eating out have to be so expensive? True, to produce crayfish on a silver salver served with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot by tuxedo-clad staff under the chandeliers of an historic house is always going to cost a packet in raw materials, wages and maintenance costs. But I am not talking about the height of luxury. One of my most pleasant memories of living in Europe was going out regularly to eat as a family at unpretentious cafes where a bowl of home-made pasta and fresh tomato sauce, or do-it-yourself kebabs, or an aromatic selection of curries would cost no more than assembling and cooking the ingredients at home.

In Belgium, France, Italy and Greece especially, the other tables would also be crowded with families. Children were made welcome, and behaved accordingly: I never saw a tantrum, although there were plenty of high spirits. I feel that learning to eat in public in a civilised way is a useful part of any child’s education.

Sadly, we don’t often eat out as a family here. The climate is right for summer evenings round a restaurant table, but the prices aren’t. Even “family” restaurants seem to be expensive, and although the children claim to enjoy the unimaginative fare, I begrudge paying through the nose for a mass-produced gastronomic non-event. And while there are some excellent and cheap lunchtime restaurants serving home-made soups and imaginative salads, and takeaway bars of all kinds, sadly, few of them are open in the evenings. I had wondered if there was something in the structure of the restaurant industry in New Zealand — high wages, high rents, restrictive bureaucracy perhaps? — that made eating out here necessarily expensive. But now in Auckland and Wellington it is possible to find fun-to-eat-in cafes offering limited but imaginative menus where you can chat the night away or drop in for a quick pre-concert, or post-cinema meal and come away with change from $lO. Why not Christchurch?

“I charge $lO to $l2 — and I pay my staff well. I don’t under-

stand why other restaurants charge so much,” says Lois Daish, "Listener” food columnist and one of the pioneers of cafestyle eating in Wellington. She suspects it may simply be greed. At the Mount Cook cafe, she specialises in quick-cooking dishes, such as mussels steamed to order, chicken breasts pan fried in a Parmesan, oregano and fresh breadcrumb coating, or whole rumps of lamb, seared, baked and sliced. She makes her own French fries, with the skins on — “people love them, whatever the nutritionists say” — and also offers vegetarian dishes such as quiche and salad or broccoli with blue cheese.

The cafe seats 50 indoors, 40 outside, and stays open extended hours. “We can keep prices down because we keep busy,” she says. “And we keep busy because prices are down.”

She thinks other restaurateurs are beginning to see the writing on the wall. The former owner of two of Wellington’s most expensive restaurants, Bacchus and Villa House, now runs the moderately priced Caseys. “Business people are spending less money on food entertainment at slick places,” is Lois Daish’s assessment.

The trend has certainly caught on in Auckland. “Everybody’s opened brasseries,” agrees a restaurant critic, Michael Guy. While he believes some of the establishments bear no relation

to the real thing, either in atmosphere or in price, a quick trip around the city at his suggestion revealed a diversity of good quality cheap eating houses that could teach Christchurch a thing or two.

At one extreme is the selfconsciously trendy Cafe Splash, with its sand and sea-coloured New Image decor, menu of Early Tides, The Plunge and Uplifts (read Starters, Mains and Desserts), extensive wine list and exotic cocktails, artist-in-resi-dence and live entertainment. “Food is all about entertainment,” says manager Frank Dugan. "People go out to eat for a social event, to meet friends. People want to eat out more, as part of their lifestyle.” He believes there will always be a place for the really topprice restaurants, and that midpriced places are closing down because ordinary people cannot afford to eat in them.

Frank Dugan sees the cafe as acting “like a cheap holiday: somewhere you can unwind a little without having to afford a lot.” It is open from 6.30 p.m. to 1 a.m. seven days a week. The menu is cosmopolitan, from stuffed potato skins to Arabian chicken or marinated tofu. You can drop in for a snack or a three-course meal; buy a drink or bring your own. The most expensive dish is $13.25, including vegetables, but not GST. The house wine is $lO. “We can afford low prices because we seat 150, we’re licensed and we’re efficient,” maintains Frank Dugan. At another extreme is the tiny Middle East Cafe which barely seats 25 and where the blackboard i menu has scarcely changed in seven years: sis

kebab made with fresh lamb, chawarma (a type of doner kebab) and vegetarian falafel made with chick peas, served with pita bread or chawarma buns and salad with hummus and tabouli. Price: $3.90 a portion, $9.25 a plateful. “We have built up expertise in a particular recipe and turned it into a very good product by virtue of doing it ail the time,” explains Sjoerd Rustenhoven. With its dark interior, stained wooden furniture and fringed lampshades, the cafe would look as typically Dutch as its owners, were it not for the camels and pyramids plastering the walls and a kebab rotisserie behind the counter.

“It’s a cosy atmosphere,” says Sjoerd. “Why should it look like a hamburger bar? People like sitting in an environment that’s special.”

Sjoerd and Marjan Rustenhoven took the format from the popular casual eating houses they knew in Europe. “In Amsterdam, kebabs are more popular than hamburgers,” he remarks. “It’s convenience food half way between a takeaway and a bistro.”

Being near the cinemas means few customers spend long in the cafe; with constant pressure on tables they probably wouldn’t feel comfortable lingering. “We keep the prices low, because it’s a small place and oiir customers have to put up with quite a lot — lack of space means lack of service, and we want people to come back.”

Come back they do; 80 per cent of the customers are regulars. “Some of the more fervent say my food is addictive,” Sjoerd jokes. “We’re quite happy with a relatively small profit and have it nice and energetic. It gets very boring for us if we’re not busy.”

Somewhere between these two places is David Rout’s Fed Up in Ponsonby, one of the earliest cafe-style restaurants in Auckland. Unpretentious, with its simple decor, blackboard menu and motley collection of painted wooden furniture, it is not the sort of place you would get dressed up to go to, as he is pleased to agree. Many of the regulars are students, and customers get used to sharing tables. •

The food bridges the gap, as David puts it, between steak, eggs, and chips, and elegant French food, with home-made soups, and imaginative salads — such as paw paw, smoked mussel and spinach — and a mixture of vegetarian and meat dishes and omelettes. Stuffed pancakes are a speciality. The top price — for fish — is $13.50; most dishes are around $lO.

Even so, competition is stiff in the area now, and David Rout' plans to bring prices down further by cutting down on expensive ingredients, replacing fish by mussels, for example, and installing more machinery in the kitchen. He is also refurbishing the place, and expanding into a conservatory next door, to give total seating for 60. A few doors down from Fed Up is Prego, Geoff Lambert’s trendy Italian restaurant. Outside, the walled courtyard in

warm terracotta proclaims “Mediterranean”; indoors is all soft pastels and up-market chrome, with a tiled floor, black tables, and a wide expanse of mirror.

Fresh from his success with The Cow in Queenstown, Geoff Lambert’s philosophy is that to be successful, a good restaurant has to be accessible to the public: no bookings, cheap, no restrictions on dress, open continuously from 11 to 1 a.m. It also has to serve quality food. Most dishes cost between $8 and $lO, and the menu includes three soups and home-made bread, a selection of salads, six types of pasta and seven types of pizza, plus grills, sweets, and weekly specials. “We keep prices down because Italian food is basically quite cheap to make,” says Cathy Gillman, the office manager. “Also we’re busy. If we had fewer people, we would have to increase our prices.” The wine list ranges from Selaks white burgundy at $9.75 to Moet et Chandon Brut at $57.50. The prices do not include GST. Being licensed, with reasonably priced wines, is another reason for Prego’s popularity, Cathy Gillman believes. The restaurant seats 60 in-

doors, and a further 32 in the courtyard. They expect to get three sittings per table per night — and do.

“The groovy people in Auckland don’t come here — it’s too big, too real. We don’t mind,” says Peter Scott, of Armadillo.

Named after the state animal of Texas, an upstairs barn of a place, with bare boards and exposed brick walls decorated with desert murals, animal skulls and cowboy film posters, it offers Country and Western music and “good simple fare”: grills, roasts and fries with colourful salads. All mains are $l5, including GST.

The restaurant is the twin of an equally successful Armadillo in Wellington that has been going since 1983. The Auckland venture has been open for 18 months. "Within six months we were full every night,” he asserts.

It seats more than 100, but Peter Scott refuses to take big parties. “The place could turn into a riot. The larger the group, the poorer the quality of the wine, and the poorer the behaviour,” he says.

He and his partner got the idea one evening watching movies and listening to Country and Western music. “I can’t

stand pop/rock music,” he explains. "We said, wouldn’t it be great to go to a restaurant with really good simple food, a good bottle of wine and good C and W music, no b... 5..., no hovering waiters.” There are no bucking broncos either. “Tacky,” he says.. At the moment the restaurant is 8.Y.0.; they are applying for a licence. “It’s convenient. Licensed places don’t have to be a rip-off.”

Gumdiggers doesn’t look like a cheap restaurant. Housed in one of Birkenhead’s historic buildings, its decor has a sort of cosy .opulence: olive green furnishings picked out with gold, heavy drapes, dark wooden furniture and red tableclothes. Old photographs of the gumdiggers,' who 100 years ago flocked to the area, their tools and hurricane lamps, hang on the walls. But the top price on the menu

is $11.50, including GST. Most mains are $9 or $lO. James Archibald describes his food as middle of the road, like himself and his customers. “Unadventurous, but value for money.” He nevertheless sneaks venison and jugged hare in amongst the shrimp cocktails, grilled steaks and lemon meringue pie.

Some of his customers are locals, some come from other parts of Auckland; some are young, many are middle-aged, few are trendy. Most are regulars. The restaurant is booked out three weeks in advance;, three months ahead on weekends. He opens five nights a week, and seats 50 comfortably. “We’ve always had fairly low prices — it’s my background,” he jokes — he is a Scot. “I don’t feel I should charge»more than I have to. You should put a price on that you think is fair — not the New Zealand idea of charging what you can.” “We make a good living, making a profit we’re happy with. I feel if you give value for money, the customer can go out without having to save up. We get a lot of regulars — and that’s better business than occasionals. If every chair is covered, you don’t have to make a lot of money on each to make a profit.”

Diversity of quality, cheapness

80 per cent

are regulars

‘Unadventurous

but money value’