Locals love this modern Italian restaurant, and Jesse did too.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been visiting restaurants that have actually invited me. One of the first things people want to know about my job is “do the owners ask you to come?” and the answer is usually no,
I just show up. But I do get emails from time to time requesting a visit, sometimes a complimentary visit, and I reply saying that I’ll try to eat there in my own time, with my own money.
You would think that guarantees a good experience but I’d say these places are worse, on average, than the ones who don’t get in touch. It makes sense, I suppose, if the dining room is quiet and the owners can’t work out why, to turn up every marketing dial they can. But I must advise against inviting a restaurant critic to tell the world about you if you’re not absolutely sure you’re getting it right. I have, in the past few months, walked away from two meals and decided, as a matter of kindness, not to report what I experienced. A horrific review is good for clicks but bad for the soul.
I didn’t risk this happening at Corner Bar, where I kept my email promise by showing up at 7pm on a Tuesday before realising I’d chosen the same night as their weekly pub quiz. I’m sure the food was good but I didn’t fancy picking at salmon salad while a group of boozy men next to me argued over the capital of Peru (it’s Lima). So, to the correspondents from this promising-looking gastropub in Remuera: I’ll be back, some time, and next time I’ll be sure I’ve avoided quiz nights and bingo evenings before I commit.
Photo / Babiche Martens
Forced to change my plans at the last minute, I was lucky to have Spiga just down the road. I’d reviewed them in 2021 when they were operating out of a small room on one side of an upmarket alleyway but since then the empire has expanded, and they now have a dedicated deli, a dining room and a bar that, crucially, didn’t include a man with a microphone asking us to name the fifth element in the periodic table (it’s Boron).
How good is Spiga? Well, the locals seem to love it. A full restaurant at this early stage of the week is an excellent sign indeed, and we sat down at the last available table next to a birthday couple and a girls’ night out.
Service was a little slow and casual to begin with and for a moment I was wishing I’d stayed at Corner Bar. But things improved shortly after I was spotted by the chef/co-owner Fabrizio Napolitano, who arrived tableside and happily looked over my order to make sure I was getting a good spread of his current offerings. We didn’t have to wait long for anything after that, and we enjoyed what was certainly the best meal I’ve eaten this year.
Spiga’s salmon. Photo / Babiche Martens
Spiga has a long and lovely Italian menu, with familiar dishes cooked in unfamiliar ways. I ordered a couple of seafood plates to start, and something more substantial for the mains.
An octopus salad was fresh and delicious, the fragments of white flesh small enough that you didn’t have to think too much about the eight limbs that had made the dish possible. The chef had studded the salad with strong flavours – last tomatoes of the season, dried over two days into sweet intensity (in a low oven because “we can’t dry tomatoes on Spiga roof”); guanciale, the salty pork jowl that makes everything taste of Rome; and pecorino cheese, whipped into a foam that you could stir around like a dressing.
The salmon dish is a must-order, featuring bright slices of fish cured in “sour cherry liqueur” which gives this rather non-Italian protein a little taste of the house. It’s served with a delicate panzanella made with Veronese olive oil and a range of fresh green vegetables including, of course, tomatoes.
The aglio olio on the menu at Italian restaurant Spiga in Remuera. Photo / Babiche Martens
Spaghetti aglio olio is my favourite pasta dish, so I had to try his reinvented version – a brilliant ravioli-style pasta filled with chilli, ricotta and parmigiano. He’d predicted the heat would be “not too spicy … smooth!” but I found it much spicier than the usual aglio olio recipe, which I have eaten around 1000 times. I loved it, particularly the way the perfectly round parcels burst into a mouthful of flavour when you bit down on them. Like the salmon, it came with snowpeas – a fresh, snappy texture in each bite.
He is so clever, this guy. A beef cheek tagliatelle came in an intensely savoury, vaguely sweet stock with cubes of meat that were both geometrically perfect but collapsed into slow-cooked wonderfulness as soon as I chewed down on them. Pasta ribbons had that little stretch you get when it’s made fresh, and it was of course cooked to Italian standards of toothiness.
Photo / Babiche Martens
I quite liked the staff once they’d warmed up and there was a touching moment when three of them appeared with a birthday cake to sing “Buon Compleano!” to the guy next to us. He didn’t want it, we didn’t want it and I presume the waiters didn’t want it either but we all smiled and clapped with imaginary delight.
“Are you all Italian?” I asked her as we paid the bill.
“No,” she said. “I’m Argentinian, she’s Argentinian and he’s a Kiwi but he’s Austrian.”
Well, I guess hiring only Italians would be an obscure breach of the Human Rights Act. No mind. You only need one good one, and he’s in the kitchen, creating some of the most delicious food you’ll find in the city.
Address: Shop 1E, 415 Remuera Rd, Remuera
Contact: (09) 869 8080, spiga.nz, @spiga.nz
Opening hours: Lunch, Tuesday–Sunday, 12pm–2pm; Dinner, Tuesday–Sunday, from 5pm, last booking, 8:30pm
From the menu: Octopus salad $34, cured salmon $33, aglio olio bottoni $38, beef cheek tagliatelle $37
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.
According to dining-out editor Jesse Mulligan.