Where I Ate Last: Advieh at InterContinental Auckland

This week Tony Astle ate at Advieh, a restaurant in the new InterContinental Hotel in Auckland.  

With ‘Advieh’ being Persian for spice, the menu boasts a fusion of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and the finest local produce. 

Tony sampled the Marlborough oysters, the natural and grilled kingfish crudo, the lamb, the grilled oyster mushrooms, and said the hand cut chips are to “die for”. 

LISTEN ABOVE

 

Recipe of the Week: Antoine’s bread pudding with crème Anglaise

This is a sublime Bread and Butter Pudding made in individual ramekins and served with Crème Anglaise. Antoine's Designer Bread and Butter Pudding goes to show how skill and imagination can turn an unassuming dish, whose origins lie in thrift and necessity, into a work of culinary art. 

 

 

Ingredients 

BREAD PUDDING 

18 slices white bread crusts removed 

½ cup unsalted butter 

⅓ cup Grand Marnier 

1 ½ tbsp raisins 

1 ½ tbsp mixed citrus peel 

1 ½ tbsp apricot conserve 

6 whole eggs 

4 egg yolks 

100 g sugar 

2 cups milk 

2 cups cream 

Brown sugar for dusting 

  

  

CRÈME ANGLAISE 

2 cups milk 

1 vanilla pod 

6 egg yolks 

75 g caster sugar 

  

  

Instructions 

FOR THE PUDDING 

Cut the bread to fit the bottom and sides of six individual ramekins and cut six rounds to act as tops. Butter all bread on one side and line the ramekins, butter side out. 

Sprinkle the bread lining the ramekins with Grand Marnier. Place a portion of raisins, mixed peel, and apricot conserve in each ramekin. 

Beat the eggs, sugar, milk and cream with a whisk until thoroughly combined, then ladle the custard mixture evenly into each ramekin. 

Allow the ramekins to rest for five minutes, allowing the bread to soak up the custard. 

Preheat the oven to 160° C. Top up each ramekin and place a bread lid on each, butter side up. Dust with brown sugar and place in a roasting dish. Pour hot water into the dish until it is halfway up the outside of the ramekins. Bake until custard is set. 

  

FOR THE CRÈME ANGLAISE 

Heat the milk and infuse with the vanilla pod for about ten minutes. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Bring the heated milk to a boil and then allow to cool for a couple of minutes. Pour the warm milk onto the egg yolk mixture. Mix thoroughly. 

Place the combined egg yolk and milk mixture into a clean pan. Over a low heat, stir gently with a wooden spoon until the sauce thickens and coats the back of the spoon. Make sure you do not let the sauce boil or it will curdle. Leave to cool, then pass through a sieve into a pouring jug. 

  

TO SERVE 

Run a knife around the inside of the ramekins, carefully remove the bread puddings and place each pudding on an individual serving dish. Serve with Crème Anglaise and a quenelle of whipped cream. Garnish with a few strawberries or other seasonal fruit. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Finding the hidden gyms at the hospitality scene where I
ate last with Tony Astell on Kerry WOODAM Mornings. Yes,
and joining me now is Tony Estill. Good morning, Good
morning for you, of course, chef from the iconic Antoine's
Restaurant and Parnal back with us this week. You're going
to tell us about the ARDV restaurant at the new

(00:22):
Auckland Intercontinental Hotel.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah. I must admit I decided to pick this one
because I got a lot of restaurants and I thought
would it be good to get a bad one to
start with. Anyway, I came along and you know, we're
arrived there because it hasn't been open very long. And
Gareth Stewart is pretty famous. He used to be he's
the chef and or the head chef, and he used

(00:47):
to be at euro and Seoul, so he's now there.
He's got quite a he knows what he's doing. So
that was quite you know, you know, being a competitor
of his. For a while, I was almost hoping things
were wrong, you know, yeah, you do, you know that
jealousy when it comes to restaurants and people. However, from
the minute we walked in the door, although it must

(01:07):
have it's quite hard to get there because it's the
new for valet service. It's quite hard to get there
because it's, you know, on that dreadful road down down there,
but away. Once we got there, From the minute we
walked in the door, I thought, oh, dear, I think
I'm going to quite like this. You know, it's one
of those sort of feelings you get. I had had
a lot of people, especially of my age group, you know,
the geriatrics around the town, that I had a lot

(01:29):
of those people saying, you know, it's not it's not
boomer material. And I've noticed that because it was quite noisy.
It's a millennium sort of thing. And the the the
people were quite young, of a couple of older people,
and they were a bit grumpy looking. But there's no
tablecloths there, there's no absorption of noise. And anyway, we

(01:50):
had this most wonderful girl that well, I don't know,
you'd love to call people a waiting person. She was female,
unbelievably friendly and professional. I was just I thought, here
we go. They're also young there, and because there are
a lot of restaurants you go to at the moment
that they're terrible sets. You know, use guys okay or
you know you solace you and all that sort of stuff.
But this girl was She was just cheeky enough to

(02:12):
make you intrigued, and she was young, and we were
just quite excited about the whole thing. And then there
was a little what luthy Wanian I think that's how
you say waiting mail and another one. The staff were fantastic,
and I have to say that you know they were.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Because it makes a difference to your night, doesn't.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
They know they And they didn't. They weren't. They were
friendly and cheeky enough, but they knew how to stand
back and let you go for it. And they were
so knowledgeable everything on the menu, you know. I asked
the tricky questions and I was just pushed to one
very nicely, and I loved it.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Hey, you sort it? So what kind of food is it?

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well? Well it's Persian, so well it's Iranian type Persian
but from Middle East. But it's that's why I was
hoping it was going to be wrong, you know, because
I'm not a great spicy person, but that's what the
name is. It's Persian for spice. And anyway, they've got
it's embracing New Zealand as well with all the other flavors,
and it's it's actually quite spicy for New Zealand food. However,

(03:10):
they had Marlborough oysters and they were the raw ones
were unbelievably I mean that that's I do a tick
system of five and those Marlborough oysters they were knocking
on the door of bluff. They were just beautiful. They
had that just slight saltiness and perfectly fresh. However, they
did have we had a dozen of the cooked ones
as well, which were grilled. Now luckily because grilled oysters

(03:33):
can be a stuff with old boots. But they were
beautifully tender. But unfortunately they ruined them by put this
really tough bacon on top, which I didn't quite didn't
quite get it. The oyster was perfect with the bacon.
I think they should look at that because it was chewy.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
I'm getting really hungry, Tony.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
And then we then we moved on to we had
it's small plates. Right.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
I was going to ask you, is it shard tasting?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
However, I get the and I don't like sharing with people,
especially if I picked something that I don't want them
to have. But it was. It was all there and
some of it worked in some and you know, it's
in the pricey bracket. We have to tell people that,
you know, it's not it's you know, it's quite eye
watering because you know, main course up to fifties and
the little plates are sort of twenties to thirties, so

(04:21):
if you get five, you know, you can get a
bit carried away. But we had the grilled oysters. I
wasn't uite hot about those. But then we had kingsfish
crudo and that was unbelievably magnificent. But once again there
was just one thing on. It was shredded raw or
marinated rhubarb, and it was this stringy string, you know,

(04:43):
a bit worrying to get down the old clagger. But
apart from that, I mean, the fish was magnificent. I
think they should have thought something like maybe a shaved fenel,
something a little bit more user friendly. It was clever,
but too clever. I think.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
I love the way that you're not only critiquing with
the food, but you've also then got some advice.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, well, I'm sure girls doesn't want to hear my advice. Ever,
how I just can't help myself. You know, but it's helpful.
I mean, I don't like raw rubarb anyway, but I
thought pickle was going to be fantastic. But it was
very stringy and it was a bit worrying for.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Is this a special occasion place total?

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Probably there was a lot of young people they're having
obviously had a lot of money because they were sitting there,
but in so many damn telephones, which you know, I
just mind you. I was one because I was taking photos. However,
I think they picked I was doing something bad because
they kept coming back. But you know it was it
was a bad lock for me, but I mean, you've
got to take the photos. We then moved on to

(05:43):
we had some the lamb neck lamb bones, I think,
and that oh, I mean that that's got a four
it's got four ticks. That one was it's slow cooked
and the spices and the flavor were amazing and you
just put your fork and it just fell to pieces. However,
once again they there's another sorry Gareth, but there was
a pickled There were pickled vegetables on time I have.

(06:04):
I think I've got a thing about pickled vegetables. It's
going to work for me. However, other people at the table.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Said you're consistent.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yes, get a life, you know, yeah, maybe pickled vegetables
of thing to do. The other thing, which I must
actually criticize slightly. The plates weren't hot, and I'm a
huge fan of hot food hot plates, and I always
know when a waiter comes out and they're using that
they've got their bare hands on a plate. Here we go,
We've got a cold plate, so I think they could
warm their plates up a little bit more. Then we

(06:32):
came to the venison. Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
I'm giving out five, five out of five texts.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
That was magnificent. It was that I think it's called
dear something name of it there I haven't gotten in
front of me. But it was absolutely I like the
button the meat to bite me before I bite it,
you know. So a lot of people don't like that,
but I'm a blur person. But venison must be undercooked.
And I'll tell you what it was, absolutely perfect. It

(06:58):
was magnificent. And I'm not going to talk about that. Well,
I'll talk about the dessert. It was a fijoa fijoa fijoa,
but it wasn't my taste. It was and the rest
of the tables was similar. It was a fija. It
was a cheesecake with fijoa granita, which is sorbet and
ice cream. It wasn't quite mean, it didn't really work

(07:19):
for me, but it was perfectly cooked. So I'm not
going to even give it the text because it will
make it looks unbiased.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
And the recipe that you've got for us, that we're
going to put on our website, we.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Are doing the Antoines famous design of bread and butter
pudding and it's all there and it's you know, it's
quite daunting, but it's well worth making. It's like eating
a bread sea flee rather.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Than and the best thing is that you won't be
there to give it texts. We can just enjoy it.
Tony's so lovely to catch up with you. We will
catch up with you next week.