Jesse Mulligan Reviews Bravo At Cracker Bay: This New Restaurant Is Perfect For All Kinds Of Outings
There are two problems with Bravo, but the good stuff outweighs any complaints.
Bravo is a gift to Auckland, wrapped up in a bow. I’m struggling to think of anything else like it – a vast bar and restaurant (the waitress told me they could seat 600) right on the water with a huge garden dining area. There are outdoor tables in other restaurants, but usually only two of them. At Bravo, they could seat an American football team and still have room for your family reunion. It’s the sort of space where you meet friends at midday, then, before you know it, the sun has gone down and you’re stumbling along Westhaven Promenade trying to find your way home.
Sadly, thanks to parenthood and mortgages, it’s been at least 15 years since I could afford to lose a whole afternoon like that. But domestic life comes with other benefits, like always having somebody to take to dinner. I took my eldest daughter to Bravo, and it was perfect for that kind of outing too.
It was only after I’d sat down that I realised we were in the old Homeland – Peter Gordon’s generous homecoming project – and before that it was Pier 21, then Mantell’s on the Water. If Homeland sometimes felt a little stark, Bravo has solved that problem by shipping in every potted palm tree in the upper North Island (Roger’s Plant Centre in Māngere must look like a carpark right now). The effect is magnificent – the room feels luxurious and tropical, with a sense of privacy at each table despite the scale.
There are two design problems here, and only one is fixable. The unfixable one is the banquette seating, which tips you unnervingly towards the table in front of you. It is almost impossible to sit comfortably until you discover a ledge at calf height and realise that, by bracing your heels against it, you can make the physics work. We struggled at first, and so did the table beside us until we showed them how. It’s one thing to inherit design problems from the last guys; it’s another to install expensive new furnishings that require an instruction manual just to sit on.
You’re not going to believe me about the second problem. Let me ask you, if you’d opened a premium restaurant on the Auckland waterfront, with a beautiful menu, exceptional staff and a list of cocktails designed to attract the city’s stylish set, what would you hang on the wall as a finishing touch?
If your answer was “a big screen TV playing funny animal videos from the internet”, then congratulations. Because for some reason that’s what you’ll find at Bravo, flickering away in your line of vision, pulling your focus as only a flatscreen can do. I was trying to enjoy my raw tuna taco – but out of the corner of my eye, a dog with a long stick in its mouth was struggling to pass through a doorway. Occasionally, the “Best of YouTube 2003” montage paused for a music video matching the soundtrack in the restaurant. If you’ve ever wanted to watch Go West sing Don’t Look Down (number 15 on the NZ charts, February 1986), this is the dinner spot for you.
But let’s focus on the good stuff, which far outweighs these minor complaints. It’s a lovely, large seafood-heavy menu with enough blue-chip main course options that everyone will find something to be excited about. I guess it pays to keep things broad when you have hundreds of seats to fill and a clientele ranging from society girls to hungry boaties.
And so there is steak and fish and chips and burgers and Caesar salad, plus pizzas with toppings from the simple to the sublime. There are three different prawn options – prawn toast, prawn cocktail and prawn pizza – of which I tried the toast and pizza, and strongly recommend them. I would probably have gone for the cocktail too (like tiramisu, it is a perfect dish and hard to mess up) but I forced myself to leave it alone; our dining neighbours ordered two and I can report that they look very good. As with the rest of the menu, the chefs have resisted the temptation to reinvent or otherwise wackify a proven formula.
If there’s one ingredient that sums up this menu, it’s the humble lemon – beautiful, yellow wedges of lemon that come on the side of everything cold and often pop up in hot mouthfuls too, a piece of rind dropped in here and there for flavour. It is an underrated piece of produce, often shunned for the more exotic lime, but nothing tastes more of New Zealand. I squeezed it over those tuna tacos (raw, spicy, with furikake, avocado and micro-coriander in a deep-fried tortilla shell) and the toast – golden-crunchy, studded with sesame seeds, with fleshy pieces of perfectly al dente prawn hidden inside.
What wasn’t al dente was the vodka rigatoni, which had been boiled to school camp-levels of softness. Will anyone care except me and the boys from Prada next time we host the America’s Cup? Probably not. It is an exceptionally tasty tomato sauce with plenty of ‘nduja spice and satisfyingly crunchy pan grattato scattered on top.
The serving staff were very good, though I suspect I was getting extra attention due to being spotted as a reviewer (I’m used to a senior waiter taking over my table, but this is the first time I’ve seen a junior being gently pushed away). As for the punters, everyone was over the moon to be here. Most of them looked like they were never going to leave.
Bravo
Cuisine: Seafood-led modern bistro
Address: 9 Westhaven Dr, Westhaven, Auckland
Contact: 09 275 0290, crackerbay.nz/bravo, @bravo.crackerbay
Drinks: Fully licensed
Reservations: Accepted
Hours: Monday–Wednesday, 8am–9pm; Thursday–Saturday, 8am–11pm; Sunday, 8am–9pm.
From the menu: housemade focaccia $16, tuna tacos $22, prawn toast $25, “Kraken” prawn pizza $36, vodka rigatoni $32
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’t delay.
Rating: 17/20
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