The food tastes good but it\u2019s at \u2018the wrong restaurant in the right place at the wrong time\u2019.<\/p>\n
\n This is the first time I\u2019ve visited a restaurant and been genuinely worried it might go under before my review goes to print. It pains me to say this because I met
\n the owners after my meal and they are lovely, hardworking people. But they have opened the wrong restaurant in the right place at the wrong time. Casa Bella belongs in a different neighbourhood, in a different decade. In other words, it belongs in Warkworth. I know this because they have a sister restaurant there with the same menu that sounds like it\u2019s doing pretty well.\n <\/p>\n
Casa Bella has opened on the corner of Karangahape Rd and Howe St. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
The restaurant has been opened by business partners Aman and Nikolas, who met at Portofino Mission Bay and decided at some point to strike out on their own. The menu here is similar to Portofino – too similar, probably – which is to say that it is Italian for people who have no interest in Italy. Two of the six pizzas come with pineapple. <\/p>\n
The interesting thing is that the food actually tastes pretty good. Chicken livers and mushrooms in marsala sauce are delicious (probably just as delicious as the veal in marsala sauce, and the chicken breast in marsala sauce, and fish in marsala sauce), even if you occasionally crunch down on pieces of barely-cooked onion. The bruschetta is yummy too, despite not being bruschetta. It was more like baked pizza dough, scattered with tomato, rocket, parmigiano and balsamic syrup. The menu promised basil and parsley too but this promise was broken. <\/p>\n
The bruschetta on the menu at Casa Bella. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
These dishes were delivered with charm and grace by an excellent waitress, who did a good job of relaying messages between me and the kitchen. <\/p>\n
\u201cDoes he want his steak now?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWould you like us to cook your steak now?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cCould you perhaps wait 10 minutes?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHe says to wait 10 minutes!\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHow does he want it?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHow would you like your steak cooked?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHe says he wants it rare!\u201d <\/p>\n
You get the idea. None of this offended me; I quite enjoyed hearing it play out in real time. And the diners around me seemed happy enough, too. There were perhaps half a dozen of us on this stormy Thursday night – enough for the place not to feel empty, but not enough to pay the thousands of dollars it must cost to rent this high-profile building on the corner of Howe St and K Rd. <\/p>\n
Casa Bella on K Rd. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
By now you\u2019ll be unsurprised to hear that my pasta wasn\u2019t cooked al dente. I\u2019d describe it more as al plente. As at Portofino, a lot of dishes on the menu include \u201cNapoli sauce\u201d which I think is just 1980s New Zealand slang for \u201cItalian tomato sauce\u201d (understandable given that it was normal back then to have ketchup-style sauce included with your main meal). I went for the vegetarian spaghetti – olives, mushrooms, capsicum – and the leftovers went down well in my daughter\u2019s lunchbox the next day. <\/p>\n
The wine list is priced cheaply, around $14 per glass – this is also unusual for K Road, but in a good way. I enjoyed a Peroni straight out of the tap and noted that they take great pride in their cocktails, though I was cautious about ordering the Negroni because the menu said it contained \u201craso\u201d. I\u2019d hoped this might be a rare herbal tincture but having searched through my OED I can confirm that raso is \u2026 not a word. <\/p>\n
Casa Bella’s eye fillet with mustard pepper sauce. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
My rare eye fillet was cooked expertly, in a bland but pleasant \u201cmustard pepper\u201d sauce with allegedly seasonal vegetables: steamed broccoli, steamed cauliflower and steamed carrots. Like I say, this sort of food might work in a retirement village\/Warkworth but in central Auckland it comes across like parody. The best and worst I can say is that your grandparents would enjoy it. But New Zealand cuisine has moved on since Alison Holst was our culinary queen, and I suspect there will be very few people stalking K Road hoping for a big plate of chicken fettuccine before the clubs open. <\/p>\n
How long has it been since a waiter asked you: \u201cWould you like cracked pepper?\u201d I ordered four things here so I was asked four times. Twist, twist, twist, twist. It was like Hermione\u2019s Time-Turner, except instead of going back a few hours, I was transported back to Muldoon-era Hamilton, when dining out options consisted of Pizza Hut, Cobb & Co, the Old Flame Smorgasbord and an Italian restaurant much like this one. Chances are you will have somebody in your life who will still have a fondness for this style of menu. My advice is to book them in for dinner at Casa Bella now, before time catches up with us all. <\/p>\n
Address: 469 Karangahape Rd, Auckland central<\/p>\n
Contact: 09 971 1784, casabella.restaurant, @casabella.restaurant <\/p>\n
Opening hours: 11am-11pm, Monday to Friday <\/p>\n
From the menu: bruschetta $15.50, chicken livers $24.50, spaghetti all\u2019 Arrabbiata $26.50, eye fillet $48.50 <\/p>\n
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\u2019t delay.<\/p>\n
According to dining-out editor Jesse Mulligan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The food tastes good but it\u2019s at \u2018the wrong restaurant in the right place at the wrong time\u2019.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[28748,138,193271,380,9828,564,71,6101,185,2198,302,2537,14442,2538,111,139,69,90,6744,2642,2539,762,9979,56772,223,2044,25152],"class_list":{"0":"post-368784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bella","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-casa","11":"tag-decade","12":"tag-different","13":"tag-food","14":"tag-from","15":"tag-good","16":"tag-is","17":"tag-italian","18":"tag-its","19":"tag-jesse","20":"tag-karangahape","21":"tag-mulligan","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-on","26":"tag-place","27":"tag-rd","28":"tag-restaurant","29":"tag-review","30":"tag-right","31":"tag-tastes","32":"tag-the","33":"tag-time","34":"tag-wrong"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}