Thursday, January 24, 2013

The Worst Restaurant in Auckland

The worst restaurant in Auckland opens soon. I don’t know anything about it, and I suppose I shouldn’t review it before it opens, but I read a couple of things in the Herald AND I’ve seen their logo on a letterhead. What more is there to know?

The restaurant is called Seven, on the corner of Hobson and Victoria Streets in the city. It used to be Escolup, which should never have been shut down. I never went there myself but WOW, it was fantastic.

Before Escolup the restaurant was called Paul’s Place. Now THAT was a good restaurant. When it opened in 1989 I told everybody not to eat there because it represented the death of the restaurant industry. But I changed my mind recently and have now decided it was the best food in Auckland. So you definitely should have gone.

Stay away from Seven though. Nothing personal against the three chefs they’ve hired, but I hear they’re going to be offering small plates – tapas! – on the menu instead of the traditional three courses. That’s ridiculous. You can’t taste food properly unless you eat a big bowl of it. Small plates is part of the dumbing down of the restaurant industry. Stop treating us like we can’t focus on a whole plate of food! Yeah, I know tapas are big in Spain. Fuck Spain.

Seven has taken over Escolup’s facebook page – they posted to say that people who live in Auckland and like dining out might appreciate hearing about the new venture, and that we’re welcome to ‘unlike’ the page if we want to. Fuck them! What if we don’t know how to unlike a page?? We weren’t all born with PhDs.

When Seven opens on the 4th of February I certainly won’t be eating there. It’s going to be the worst restaurant in Auckland, and I’m going to spend that night like I’ve spent the last eleven nights: sitting on my couch at home angrily drinking shiraz, staring at the wall and wondering why I care this much about someone else’s restaurant.

[anonymous]