Locals love this modern Italian restaurant, and Jesse did too.<\/p>\n
\n For the past few weeks, I\u2019ve been visiting restaurants that have actually invited me. One of the first things people want to know about my job is \u201cdo the owners ask you to come?\u201d and the answer is usually no,
\n 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\u2019ll try to eat there in my own time, with my own money.\n <\/p>\n
You would think that guarantees a good experience but I\u2019d say these places are worse, on average, than the ones who don\u2019t get in touch. It makes sense, I suppose, if the dining room is quiet and the owners can\u2019t 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\u2019re not absolutely sure you\u2019re 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. <\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t risk this happening at Corner Bar, where I kept my email promise by showing up at 7pm on a Tuesday before realising I\u2019d chosen the same night as their weekly pub quiz. I\u2019m sure the food was good but I didn\u2019t fancy picking at salmon salad while a group of boozy men next to me argued over the capital of Peru (it\u2019s Lima). So, to the correspondents from this promising-looking gastropub in Remuera: I\u2019ll be back, some time, and next time I\u2019ll be sure I\u2019ve avoided quiz nights and bingo evenings before I commit. <\/p>\n
Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
Forced to change my plans at the last minute, I was lucky to have Spiga just down the road. I\u2019d 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\u2019t include a man with a microphone asking us to name the fifth element in the periodic table (it\u2019s Boron). <\/p>\n
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\u2019 night out. <\/p>\n
Service was a little slow and casual to begin with and for a moment I was wishing I\u2019d 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\u2019t have to wait long for anything after that, and we enjoyed what was certainly the best meal I\u2019ve eaten this year. <\/p>\n
Spiga’s salmon. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
An octopus salad was fresh and delicious, the fragments of white flesh small enough that you didn\u2019t have to think too much about the eight limbs that had made the dish possible. The chef had studded the salad with strong flavours \u2013 last tomatoes of the season, dried over two days into sweet intensity (in a low oven because \u201cwe can\u2019t dry tomatoes on Spiga roof\u201d); 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. <\/p>\n
The salmon dish is a must-order, featuring bright slices of fish cured in \u201csour cherry liqueur\u201d which gives this rather non-Italian protein a little taste of the house. It\u2019s served with a delicate panzanella made with Veronese olive oil and a range of fresh green vegetables including, of course, tomatoes. <\/p>\n
The aglio olio on the menu at Italian restaurant Spiga in Remuera. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
Spaghetti aglio olio is my favourite pasta dish, so I had to try his reinvented version \u2013 a brilliant ravioli-style pasta filled with chilli, ricotta and parmigiano. He\u2019d predicted the heat would be \u201cnot too spicy … smooth!\u201d 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 \u2013 a fresh, snappy texture in each bite. <\/p>\n
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\u2019s made fresh, and it was of course cooked to Italian standards of toothiness. <\/p>\n
Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
I quite liked the staff once they\u2019d warmed up and there was a touching moment when three of them appeared with a birthday cake to sing \u201cBuon Compleano!\u201d to the guy next to us. He didn\u2019t want it, we didn\u2019t want it and I presume the waiters didn\u2019t want it either but we all smiled and clapped with imaginary delight. <\/p>\n
\u201cAre you all Italian?\u201d I asked her as we paid the bill. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m Argentinian, she\u2019s Argentinian and he\u2019s a Kiwi but he\u2019s Austrian.\u201d <\/p>\n
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\u2019s in the kitchen, creating some of the most delicious food you\u2019ll find in the city. <\/p>\n
Address: Shop 1E, 415 Remuera Rd, Remuera<\/p>\n
Contact: (09) 869 8080, spiga.nz, @spiga.nz <\/p>\n
Opening hours: Lunch, Tuesday\u2013Sunday, 12pm\u20132pm; Dinner, Tuesday\u2013Sunday, from 5pm, last booking, 8:30pm <\/p>\n
From the menu: Octopus salad $34, cured salmon $33, aglio olio bottoni $38, beef cheek tagliatelle $37 <\/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":"Locals love this modern Italian restaurant, and Jesse did too. For the past few weeks, I\u2019ve been visiting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3390,45498,156,5420,78,2198,2537,20829,2882,4521,24350,2538,111,139,69,23497,2539,763,197907,8475,223,1961,6173,379],"class_list":{"0":"post-380476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-best","9":"tag-eaten","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-hes","12":"tag-in","13":"tag-italian","14":"tag-jesse","15":"tag-locals","16":"tag-love","17":"tag-meal","18":"tag-modern","19":"tag-mulligan","20":"tag-new-zealand","21":"tag-newzealand","22":"tag-nz","23":"tag-remuera","24":"tag-restaurant","25":"tag-reviews","26":"tag-spiga","27":"tag-thats","28":"tag-the","29":"tag-this","30":"tag-too","31":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380476","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=380476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}