You enter from the street through what feels like an office building. A dark corridor to a lift that takes you to the 40th floor and the hotel lobby, and a bonsai on a marble table. The bonsai is changed every week, we read afterwards, and they are hundreds of years old. The tree was the best thing in the lobby.
The dining room is beautiful, the service excellent. There is a terrace too, 34 seats, which we would have liked to try. They serve dinner out there, but it cannot be booked, the tables are handed out on the night. The weather did not permit. Yes, it is a Michelin setting. Could the food hold up to its star?
It started very well, with good sommelier work. We chose between two bottles with her, Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir Aged Release 2012 from Canterbury and Ata Rangi Pinot Noir 2019 from Martinborough.
I was worried the 2012 was past its best. She said it was not. We went with the Pegasus Bay, and she was right.
And the water. We asked for a Japanese one, Perrier and San Pellegrino you can drink anywhere. They brought Oku-Aizu Kaneyama Natural Sparkling Water from Fukushima, naturally carbonated, soft, with small bubbles. If you see it on a menu, order it.
Strong start with the bread service too. Potato bread, thin crackers, and the longest grissini so far.
After that a pre-starter, a cold tomato soup. Utterly balanced, just the right amount of tomato and a hint of black pepper to lift it. The best thing we ate all night, and we did not even order it.
We were both in the mood for pasta, so pasta as primi. Spaghetti e pomodoro, with Niko Romito’s signature tomato sauce, and fettuccella with Ise-ebi lobster and Botan-ebi prawns. My wife was happy with hers. Not up there, but decent.
Mine had a sauce well suited to the dish, perhaps a bit oily, which made the pasta hard to twirl around the fork. Slippery. And where were my lobster and prawns? A couple of small bites, that was it.
Compared to the pomodoro it was three times the price. It felt like a rip-off.
For secondi we shared the Maialino croccante, crispy suckling pig with orange caramel sauce. A razor-sharp crust, some herbs underneath.
The meat was juicy, with a fine flavour, but there was too much fat for our taste. A stone-cold tomato salad on the side, and some baby roast potatoes. The components did not work together.
The website says the menu is classic Niko Romito, a contemporary expression of authentic Italian cuisine.
This was not that. The staff described this as the most Japanese-style dish on the menu. To us, it felt more like Italian-Japanese fusion than the Italian cooking we had come for.
To end it we shared our first Michelin-starred tiramisu. An Italian chef, what could go wrong with the most iconic Italian dessert? Everything.
It came in the same cup as the tomato soup, a mushy something. If there were ladyfingers in it, we never found them. A four-year-old would probably be happy. But this was not on the kids’ menu.
The dining room was beautiful. Our service was great. The food did not hold up to the star.
The Italian restaurant manager spent the evening circling the room, talking. He stopped by at the end of our dinner and wanted to know our names. Strange, just strange. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. Please do not touch me. We are not buddies.
Later he stood right behind me, talking to an American couple for ten minutes, with his back to our table. That is not how you work a room.
The restaurant’s chef came out too, stopping to talk to guests at some tables. Ours was not one of them.
The saviours of the night were two people. The man who served our table, friendly, real hospitality, and the sommelier, whose wine work was perfect.
On the way out I asked for her. I wanted to give credit where it was due. She had gone off duty, so they went and fetched her. We said thank you.
The room was great. Our service was great. The food did not hold up to the star.
And the two men at the top made it worse. We like it when the chef comes out, we usually do. But not like this, picking tables. Not with a hand on the shoulder. The people who served us knew exactly how to do it. Their bosses could start by watching them.
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