Food judge to weigh in on Kiwi kai

Esther Harward shares cake and coffee with the foreign food guru who's about to pass judgement on New Zealand's best restaurants

Ralph Kyte-Powell - wine  lover, food critic, Australian -  takes a mouthful of coconut and  raspberry cake.

So what is it like?

"Lovely. Unnecessary."

Old habits die hard. Kyte-Powell has been critiquing restaurants for 20 years. He writes a column for Melbourne's Age newspaper. He has six days of major- league gorging ahead of him at some of New Zealand's best restaurants.

As international guest judge for Cuisine magazine's 2009 New Zealand Restaurant of the Year awards, he is travelling the country with 21 other critics, eating in pairs, marking 39 restaurants on their wine, food and service. Today, though, he is sticking to coffee and cake in a small cafe in the trendy Auckland suburb of Ponsonby, and explaining what's right - and wrong - with modern food.

Before he became a critic, Kyte-Powell co-owned a hotel and managed a restaurant in his native Melbourne. What did he think of food critics back then?

"We didn't like some of them. I think there were some critics who had the story written before they visited you."

Now, from the other side of the counter, he notices everything - if a person sitting behind him is being ignored, if waiters remove dirty dishes when they go to the kitchen, if a person who coughs gets a glass of water.

He has visited New Zealand several times in the past five years, and says the quality of restaurants has improved in "leaps and bounds" in that time.

His least favourite Kiwi meal? A mince and cheese pie. "There's something about the cheese that doesn't seem to work. I'm sure it's an acquired taste."

Tactfully, he turns the subject to an Australian experience - travelling in rural Victoria, eating in Chinese restaurants. "I had a series of dishes that were repulsive." Steamed duck with veges - "This dish seemed to me in many ways that it had already been eaten." Pork ribs that were pieces of bone, deep fried in batter, heated with tomato sauce.

He had a great meal on Thursday night though, somewhere in New Zealand (he can't give away too much). It was beef cooked two ways - a chargrilled sirloin, cooked rare, with a braised ox cheek, slow cooked in red wine.

"The two of them were quite different but there was a particular harmony."

He has eaten a fair few haute cuisine dishes, but has little regard for them. He predicts "foam and jelly" concoctions will be relegated to a curiosity in future.

These days, says Kyte-Powell, people who can still afford to eat out are favouring neighbourhood restaurants to save on taxi fares, and are eating fewer courses and drinking less.

What was once exotic has made its way to home dining tables. Kyte-Powell says he now regularly sees ready-meals of duck and quail in Australian supermarkets, and predicts pork belly will be the next big thing in supermarkets.

Among home cooks, classic 1970s dishes are making a comeback, but the massive rise in quality, fresh ingredients used in cooking over the next 40 years means coq au vin is no longer made with nasty imported red wine, caged chickens and lashings of cream.

The winners of the Cuisine awards will be announced in August.

- © Fairfax NZ News