The Tasting Shed

Those of us living north of Kumeu have long hungered for restaurants equal to those found nearer the city. With every new opening, anticipation grows that, finally, we will be delivered an establishment that is both decent and close.

The Tasting Shed, the love child of TV-professionals-turned-restaurateurs Jo and Ganesh Raj, certainly whets the appetite. The couple have cleverly converted a 1945 pear cider shed alongside SH 16, adjacent to Coopers Creek Vineyard, into a place where they can share their passion for food and wine from around the world.

It’s a pleasant, well-designed room oozing substantive style and rustic charm. The inspired use of timber and concrete, plenty of space between tables, good indoor-outdoor flow, great colour choices and appropriate lighting work seamlessly in a welcome lack of ostentation. The main dining area has a weather-tight outdoor gazebo attached and there is a wonderfully innovative, stand-alone cabana on the back lawn.

Service is passionate and attentive and it’s marvellous to have the owners at the ready, welcoming guests as friends and, like proud parents, relishing the opportunity to share this new addition to their family.

The Tasting Room’s philosophy is to provide a place “where wine craves food”. Diners are invited to form
a meal by ordering a number of entree-sized plates from a menu that professes to be influenced by “the exotic flavours of the Middle East, through to the northernmost parts of Spain, France and Italy, then east through Croatia and Serbia”. The wine list is similarly well travelled, offering a fascinating selection across the varietal spectrum from all around the world.

But this level of variety, while appetising, is also something of an Achilles heel. Dishes such as twice-cooked pork belly with fennel and smoked apple; Scotch fillet with panfried gnocchi and soffrito; or even triple-cooked potatoes with garlic and rosemary are, while perfectly good, only marginally exotic, yet still the wine list struggles to work in harmony with the sheer variety of flavours. There is little to tie the disparate elements together to provide the harmony which would make the experience complete.

Chef Sara Simpson, formerly of Clooney and Terrôir at Craggy Range, is clearly an adept cook. The problem is not in kitchen technique, but in the lack of overall cohesiveness. With such a wide-ranging menu (other dishes include braised and rolled pig’s head; chargrilled quail; and duck confit cigars), it would perhaps be helpful
to have specific wine matches suggested for each dish.

Small plates are a popular option for casual dining but the portions here are not really of a size to share. Dishes range in price from $12 for a serving of vegetables to $22 for six prawns. Three to four dishes are recommended to feed two people but our experience suggests it takes more like three to four dishes to satisfy each person.

The Tasting Shed experience would be enhanced by a frequently changing menu with a stronger thematic thread, along with a wine list that is built around the menu rather than taking such an individual road. A rejig of portion sizes to either make them larger and truly sharable, or bite-sized, thereby encouraging the ordering of many small tastes, would also be welcome.

The citizens of West Auckland are well served by the opening of The Tasting Shed. It has certainly added another welcome dining dimension and deserves, once it fully finds its feet, to attract the attention of the food-inquisitive from well beyond its immediate surrounds.

State Highway 16, Kumeu, ph: 09-412 6454, thetastingshed.co.nz
Wed-Thurs 4pm-10pm, Fri-Sun 12pm-11pm
$$-$$$