Lilian

As New Zealand prepares to transition to alert level two, it seems like a good time to write about a restaurant I visited a few weeks before lockdown that I have been dying to get back to ever since.

Her name is Lilian, and she is fabulous. Pre-lockdown this neighbourhood osteria was so heaving it would have been impossible to practice social distancing in. Lilian is in a prime position to catch the setting sun and the view over their white-cotton bistro curtains can be quite spectacular, if you can remember to look up from their equally spectacular food (I tried to take a picture of the aforementioned setting sun, but I won’t bore you with how my iPhone camera failed me yet again). The interior of Lilian is nothing short of understated class. She’s the kinda girl who’d say “Oh this? I swear I just woke up this way.” It’s European chic, with a dark wood bar mixed with slim green tiles and overhanging light pendants that look like dangling moons. A leather banquette lines the other half of the restaurant and the tables are slid cosily together so that, yes, you can eavesdrop on your neighbours’ conversations including them deliberating on what to order and then just ordering the same thing as you as your dishes begin to arrive. Winkie emoji.

Lillian’s menu is a toast to the seasons, and I wonder when they reopen in full what autumnal and winter produce will grace their menus next. When I ate there, I had an incredible dish of grilled peaches, a symphony of sour and sweet, laced with herbaceous basil notes. The peaches are beautifully charred and almost resembled meat more than fruit; the subtly sweet, creamy finish of the ricotta and toasty kiss of hazelnuts rounded the dish off nicely. Harmonious is how I would describe most of their menu (although we stayed away from anything that came from the sea for the sake of one of my dinner buddies). We also ordered a salad of heirloom tomatoes with stracciatella, pickled shallots and oregano, which our waitress helpfully suggested would go well with the wood-fired bread. I digress first to the wood-fired bread, which stole the show, arriving at the table as an airy, lightly-blistered pouf billowing steam from its various craters. Part pita bread, part pizza base that combusted on the inside. Truthful admission: I tried to capture a boomerang of this pane-thermic activity for the ‘gram. Its wingman boasted sharply tangy shallots, smooth milky stracciatella and firm, sweet tomatoes, who had done a great job at distancing themselves from the pudgy, watery variety that unfortunately manages to convince a lot of people that they hate tomatoes. The beautiful pool of juices, olive oil and vinegar that aggregates at the bottom is what you want to drag your wood-fired bread through. It was so good in fact, that we hung onto the empty plate with just the dregs at the bottom to drag the pizza crusts (which came last) through, despite numerous but puzzled attempts by the wait staff to take it away and us rebuffing their actions. We’re special people okay, or so my mum tells me.

I’m not sure if Lilian has a conventional stove/oven (although I didn’t bother looking), as evidenced by every dish we ordered being prefixed with the words ‘wood-fired’. I have no problem with it, especially after the lovely charred treatment they gave the next dish, the eggplant with agrodolce and macadamia. Smoky, tangy and sweet with an unexpected touch of sesame, my dinner mates Jamie and Olivia found another food hack by dunking the eggplant in the tomatoes juices as well.

Lilian excels in pizzas, wood-fired of course, with novel flavour combinations that just work. Pictures of their prosciutto, grape and parmesan pizza has been doing the rounds on alert level three social media, but we ladies plumped for the courgette with courgette puree, pine nuts and lemon cream. It had a very light finish to it, with clean, fresh flavours contrasted with a little bitterness from the blistered pizza bases. We finished our meal by sharing the buttermilk panna cotta with rhubarb and merlot, probably one of the best I’ve had in recent memory. Perfectly wobbly without being overly firm, its richness cut by the tart rhubarb and merlot reduction. Simplicity at its best.

Lilian
472 Richmond Road
Grey Lynn
Auckland