The Old Church Restaurant Media releases

Courtesy of bmw Magazine new zealand

September 2008

IN PRAISE OF GOOD FOOD
Words: Jane Warwick

The way the light catches the vanilla and honey-glazed duck breast is particularly pleasing and is only enhanced by the aroma. Accompanied by potatoes, caramelised new season pears, bok choy, baby carrots and duck jus, the plate is tantalizing and fingers tremble slightly as they reach for utensils.

The grilled eye fillet with whole grain mustard mash, crispy potato nest, sautéed mushrooms and beef jus delivered to the other side of the table is just as appealing and there is a moment of dismayed indecision as to which should really have been chosen.

It was a major event to get this far, to narrow the choice to this one, so enticing is the menu.

It could have been roast venison steak with herb potato mash, glazed mixed vegetables and port wine jelly jus; or coconut infused chicken curry with saffron rice, yoghurt raita, chargrilled vegetable relish, crispy onion and a papodom; perhaps pan roasted ocean catch of the day with prawns and nicoise, agria potato, beans, mushrooms, zucchini and Roma tomatoes; or maybe lamb rack with herb potato mash, buttered green beans, roast tomato and lamb jus.

However, one taste confirms another choice could only have been as good, not better, than what is currently on the plate, which is praise for the chef.

He has high expectations of himself: it’s not what I want, it’s what you, the guest, wants; educate yourself to be the guest; push your boundaries; challenge your own high standards. It makes you weary just listening to it. He leans back all long, languid limbs and apparent composure but inside he is fizzing away like a Berocca.

The church, Deconsecrated, granted, but it kept a roof over the faithful for 109 years so some vestige of a higher power must be lurking in its corners thinking there was a time when loaves and fishes were enough for 5000. No small, plain fish from a young boy’s lunch and a palm full of bread ripped from a loaf for this lot, now. Instead it’s smoked tomato and prawn soup, pan roasted crispy skin salmon, crisp calamari with puttanesca sauce, oysters three ways and flash fried baby prawns with three kinds of bread. He must be shaking his head resignedly and wondering what the world is coming to. What it’s coming to, Lord, is to your church although maybe not quite the way you’d want it.

But the connections between religion and food are as old as the scriptures themselves, no matter what doctrine you follow. Sacred space often focuses on food and table settings; food symbols are powerful and can intangibly connect the reality of life to the holy, even for the secular and more scientifically minded. The fleeting nature of food, theologically, reflects human dependence on the divine - it is transitory and yet essential. Feminist scholars have shown “that women may be religious experts through their control of food in societies where previous scholarship has focused on the male exclusivity of sacred knowledge”, that “from the perspective of the women, the fact that women prepare for religious holidays means that it is the women who are the ritual experts, the guardians of law and tradition, the ones with the power to make or create, not simply to participate”. Which would make an interesting dinner party conversation but in the interim leads neatly onto Karen Sandler, woman, controller of this food and this particular ‘ritual’. Religiously or atavistically, it doesn’t matter; what does matter is that she rescued, refurbished and reopened the old church as a restaurant called, well, The Old Church.

It is a lavish resurrection, lush with rich fabrics, flush with rich symbols. Gilt without guilt, which is pleasing interdenominationally, interfaith-fully, agnostically and scientifically.

In an alcove angels herald madly, reflected in a beautiful and ornate oval mirror edged with black and trimmed with gold. There are lots of candles, a motif of crucifixes, filmy swathes draping the inner arches, huge mirrors and plush, opulent chairs around an open fire. An enormous chandelier overlooks it all and when a small breeze passes through, its crystals send fractured rainbows darting around the room. One-armed chairs are scattered among the tables, with tall, exaggerated Dr Suess-ish backs. Outside, the fountains are illuminated against the dark night, the garden is festooned and enchanted with small lights.

It should all be too, too twee but in fact, of course, it’s just right. Sandler obviously has the knack; lucky church, lucky us…

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