Auckland Restaurant Review: Newly renovated Farina is the happiest Italian place in Ponsonby

Address: 244 Ponsonby Rd, Ponsonby

From the menu: Vitello tonnato $29; conetto baccala $18; olive ascolane $20; mushroom pappardelle $39; salad $13; coarse $27

Score: 0-7 Stay out. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good,
give it a chance. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Excellent, don’t wait any longer.

But a good reviewer does what he has to do, so I visited in person around 4pm to see if they could squeeze us in even though they were full.

“Can you squeeze us in even though you’re full?” said the man across from me to the maitre d’, who had already begun to shake his head.

“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I turned away so many people today.”

The poor guy left, presumably to convince his date that Italian food is actually overrated. I switched to the bat.

“What if we arrived at 8:30 and ate at the bar?” I asked (many New Zealanders consider late meals and bar seating as signs of failure, but to me they are a sign of sophistication). He sighed and studied his reservation book.

“A storm is expected tonight,” he literally told me. ‘Maybe no one will come. I’ll put you in the window, and if anyone cancels, I’ll let you know.”

Someone canceled. And so, at 8:30 PM, my friend and I happily walked into Farina (we’d also talked our way into a bar in Kol, for pre-dinner cocktails) and into a room full of the happiest crowd I can remember. see in a restaurant in Auckland.

I was here because Lance, the Aucklander I trust most when it comes to Italian food, had messaged me to let Farina know. He must really love it, because when I walked in he happened to be there again, with his wife and a group of friends.

He said, “ORDER THE CORNETTO!”

More about the cornetto soon. The first thing to say is that this is a hugely inviting new space: a warm, noisy, cozy front room and then a walk through to a cozier back room, partly heated by a large stone pizza oven. Between the two main rooms is the kitchen, with a 180-degree pass that allows owner-chef Sergio Maglione to keep an eye on everyone, and everyone to keep an eye on him.

The floor staff are very good. Even the newcomers, who are closely watched by the seniors, exude a friendly efficiency in everything they do. And a few waiters really know what they are doing.

“I’m thinking of this verdicchio,” I said, “do you know it?”

“This wine comes from a town on the Middle East coast of Italy,” he began. “It is an important port. Every container ship sailing through Italy stops in this city.”

He shared some other interesting facts and then considered what they all added up to. “What I’m trying to say is that this wine goes well with seafood,” he concluded.

You could never go out and find such a waiter, no matter how much you paid. It’s pure personality mixed with years of experience, and if you discover it in a restaurant, you should eat there as often as possible.

Speaking of which, we took Lance’s advice and ordered a cornetto – a cone made from pizza dough, which may sound a bit stiff to you (like me). But it was light, fluffy and chewy. You have a choice of fillings, but we chose bacalao – a very traditional European ingredient made with salt cod. Inevitably, the wine went well.

The menu is very accessible, but contains some dishes that you have not seen before. I’ve been to Italy many times, but that was my first bite of a cornetto, and I also got my first taste of another treat: giant green olives, stuffed with braised beef and then crumbled and fried. It all felt like a small meal, dipped in aioli and eaten in three or four bites.

You can’t go to an Italian restaurant without ordering pasta and we opted for a pappardelle, which is vegetarian. It is made with mushrooms that are chopped rather than sliced ​​so that they remain plump and meaty. The sauce was a “beef demi-glace” that was even meatier, and there were also large chunks of stretchy stracciatella cheese throughout the dish. I don’t think this combination is traditional (my Italian food mentor Katie Parla, who runs culinary tours in Rome and has written three Italian cookbooks, tells me she’s never heard of it), but it’s unbeatable.

My editor rightly makes fun of me because I always ordered raw fish and I had decided to skip it here (full disclosure, we had just had an incredible kingfish sashimi with crème fraiche at Kol), but I guess it was in my fate because a plate of trevally (dressed simply with olive oil, fresh chilli, orange segments and a bit of balsamic) accidentally arrived at our table and we ate it anyway. Sorry, Jo. It was fantastic.

The music was on, the party had started. Eventually I got up and paid a pretty reasonably priced bill, before saying goodbye to anyone who would listen and then heading home.

Ponsonby has a big “Eat Drink Love” festival about to start, but on this night there was nothing about the strip to suggest it needed more promotion. If you want to dine near here I’m happy to say you need to book in advance.

From Eating Out editor Jesse Mulligan.