The lost art of the bread course - and don’t skimp on the butter

Sunday, 17 August 2025

The Wine Room’s bread basket served with, from left, roasted bone marrow butter, chicken liver parfait, and plain cultured butter with Opito Bay salt.

First things first: there’s no such thing as too much butter on your baguette.

I’m at my happiest and most gluten-ous when tucking into a bucket of bread, but let’s be honest, those squitty little pats of dairy gold wrapped in paper never go the distance. Yes, the markets are in a churn, but send more butter to the table, please.

Fortunately I’ve found a willing accomplice in Ryan Moore, executive chef at The College Hill Wine Room by David Nash; a venue previously covered in these pages for its water-tasting menu.

Ryan Moore is executive chef at The College Hill Wine Room by David Nash.

“We always serve so much butter,” says Moore, describing his bread basket, which features smoked rye sourdough from Daily Bread.

Music to the ears of this writer, who earlier in the day had been asked by a disapproving colleague whether the yellow slab on his slice of homemade bread was in fact a slice of cheese.

There’s no such judgment at The Wine Room, where bread is served with lashings of cultured cream and roasted bone marrow butter - the latter arriving in a bone. In the event of leftover butter, the kitchen will happily send more bread, even if Moore doesn’t quite understand: “I could take the whole thing on one slice and eat it with cheese.”

David Nash guides Craig Hoyle through a water-tasting at The Wine Room.

But back to the beginning, and the reason for this story.

In November last year, I was among guests at an “evening of opulence” to celebrate the opening of this “new neighbourhood wine bar and Auckland’s exclusive home of fine wine retail and private dining”. Instead of writing about the food, I wrote about The Wine Room’s water menu - which, as Nash admitted, may sound “uppity”, but it turns out water isn’t just water.

Fast-forward to April, and another email arrived from Nash, touting the venue’s new restaurant menu and inviting me to give it a whirl.

“The new menu looks great, I'd love to come back in some time,” I replied. “The other thing that's stuck with me from our previous dinner was the bread being served as a main.”

The Wine Room’s skewer with gilda of lardo, guindilla chilli, manzanilla olive and tomato, finished with lemon zest, black pepper and olive oil.

Yes, you read that right - and when I finally ventured back to The Wine Room a few weeks ago, Nash had a clear explanation for why good bread deserves to be elevated on the menu.

“We always serve it after the starters, which just creates a really good flow for people dining, having the bread as a secondary piece,” he says.

The truffle bao bun is served on a bed of decorative dehydrated mushrooms.

“It’s not the thing you launch into straight away and ruin yourself on, it’s the carb part of the meal where ‘I’m now relaxed, I’ve had something to eat…’ You have more of an emotional reaction.”

We’ve had a few emotional reactions by this point, working our way through the starters; Ricky the photographer doesn’t like olives, but he’s bullied into eating a skewer with gilda of lardo, guindilla chilli, manzanilla olive and tomato, finished with lemon zest, black pepper and olive oil. I love it; he’s still not a fan, despite the intervention.

Nash, ever-hopeful, believes the next starter will set things right: “It’s gonna change your life, Ricky!”

Ryan Moore’s roasted bone marrow butter is made using discarded beef trimmings.

The truffle bao bun is indeed a winner. “You’ve got truffle mayonnaise, a slice of raw button mushroom, more truffle mayonnaise, crispy shallots, pickled onion, chives, and then fresh truffle on top,” says Moore, explaining how it comes together. Ricky’s verdict: “phenomenal”.

Welsh rarebit with Guinness bechamel - made with leftover bread.

Duck leg with pumpkin seeds, nasturtium and buttercup squash.

By now our appetites are properly whetted, and it’s time for the main event: bread.

At this point I’m surprised to learn that Moore and the team make their own butter in-house, with cream from Lewis Road Creamery. When we assigned political reporter Anna Whyte to make her own butter a few weeks ago to see if it was cheaper, I figured it was a gimmick - Whyte herself concluded it was “expensive” and “time-consuming” - but Moore says the numbers do actually stack up.

“Cream isn’t as inflated as butter prices at the moment … We can pretty much double the yield, and it tastes better.” The butter by-products also come in handy: “If we have an event we’ll make buttermilk ice cream, or we’ll use the whey to do a fish sauce.”

The roasted bone marrow butter, too, is part of Moore’s drive to avoid waste; his kitchen goes through “so much beef”, including wagyu steak and beef tartare, and it’s a handy use for leftover trim.

“We basically render all of that down with a load of bone marrow, and then whip that with a lot of confit garlic, some lyonnaise onions, and then fold it through our cultured butter.”

Ricky and I are in heaven, chowing our way through soft, warm bread and lashings of melting gold. We run out of bread before we run out of butter, and there’s little hesitation when Moore asks if we’d like another basket. What cost of living crisis?

Later, we move on to duck leg with pumpkin seeds, nasturtium and buttercup squash; fresh winter veggies with green goddess dressing; and Welsh rarebit with Guinness béchamel - the latter made with leftover bread that’s cooked down with custard, Worcestershire sauce and black garlic, pressed into shape like a terrine, and fried.

Bread, bread, bread: colour me happy and roll me back to the newsroom.

Almost as an afterthought, I ask Nash if he has any tips for how to avoid eating too much bread. His advice isn’t much help.

“Don’t come to The Wine Room.”

For menus and bookings, visit ateliernash.co.nz.