Chef-owner Vinayak Shah and manager and co-owner Julia Benton are the proud architects of Auckland's newest fine-dining whiz - and perhaps the only Auckland fine-dining restaurant where you can enjoy a modern Indian multi-course tasting menu, besides an attractive a la carte.
Strategically positioned in Parnell, just next to where the historic Antoine's was, there's a nice courtyard for outdoor seating with a scenic patterned-brick ground, while inside there is a cozy area done up mostly in black. It's an intimate affair, but the talent and ambition here is undeniable - Auckland, watch out for this strong fine-dining competitor which has firmly landed in 2026.
The interior is compact and composed in dark shades - at a glance, you can take in most of what's going on inside the restaurant. Instead of white table-cloth, a wide beige sheet runs through the centre of the table. The servers are young, pleasant and hard-working - on the first visit, the place could have done with one more server but on the second visit, three servers apart from an alert manager worked the room. Overall this is a young restaurant and after understanding this, you will mostly tend to excuse what is not yet a long-established deep-rooted wide-branched structure because of the kaleidoscopic shoots swirling from the kitchen. At just age 30, Vinayak 'Vicky' Shah, with support from partner Julia Benton, has struck out gloriously.
A range of clientele enjoys the restaurant's offerings, indicating that a wide swathe of Auckland has started exploring the restaurant early in its arc.
The 9-course tasting menu is priced at $140, and the a la carte has appetizers at an average of $34 and mains $46. Western formats of dish composition commingle with Indian ones, an Indian influence is present in almost all dishes, and sophistication and elegance perfuse the dish design. Portion sizes, especially in the main courses, are generous. But like most fine-dining restaurants, the dish design here is not meant for sharing or disbursing from one plate.
Dish descriptions in this review alternate between the degustation and the a la carte (I enjoyed each on successive visits).
Oyster Sol Kadhi opened the degustation meal. A pink thick sauce of coconut, mangosteen and kokum gave a luxurious creamy tartness but even better was the sheer quality of the chilled oyster, meaty but utterly tender and slender on the palate, its exquisite oceanic flavour dancing with delicacy.
Spanner Crab Tartlet was a witty take on the Indian snack of 'dahi puri' (yoghurt-based filling inside small crispy shell), alas the crab flavour did not come through, snowed under by the tartness, underscoring for the umpteenth time why it is almost impossible to find good crab in NZ even as it is surrounded by the ocean. From a la carte there was another shellfish disappointment.
New Zealand's cold waters do not support prawns and a presentation of huge Skull Island prawns from Australia may have seemed a reasonable idea, but these ones with the size of a candle can't hold a candle to the sweet, haunting ocean umami of medium size prawns you can savour in Asia. You could taste their meaty, firm expanse, but the flavour was missing, both in the prawns and the tomato broth (the tomato worked neither in this nor the lemon verbena rasam in the snapper sashimi).
There was no shortage of Chef Shah taking Kiwi & global cuisine favorites and giving them an Indian spin in the appetizers. Whitebait Pakoda (whitebait being the immature fry of NZ freshwater fish) was crunchy and creative, unfortunately this will not answer the great Kiwi question - who has ever figured out the actual taste of whitebait ? (Answer : Tala, a few steps away).
As you may surmise from the above pattern, the flavour curve undulated through the course of the meals. There would be disappointments but then a dish would come along revealing the lurking excellence of the kitchen.
Butter Chicken at Aarth is a little statement rather than a legitimate course - this is Chef Shah's way of cocking a snook at the perennial Indian restaurant favourite across the globe and he's not too fussed if the joke does not taste as good as the original. This little chippy can be cradled in your palm (don't accidentally crush it) - the wafers are of honey and muscovado sugar, sandwiching spiced chicken liver pate - guess what, you'll remember your local fave butter chick more.
Chicken Uttapam, presented complimentary to me on the second visit, was a revelation on the technical front. This dish, originally a savoury pancake of fermented rice batter with a smattering of onion and tomato originating in the temples of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, finds its most smartly remixed version here. A hand sculpture cradles what looks like a lushly filled taco, with a manicured green top formed by chives. The actual uttapam here will yield some of its trademark fermented batter notes on the palate, but it's deliberately made stiff and firm like a North Indian flatbread, so as to hold shape. Coconut anchors a robustly flavoured "Chettinad" spice mix within.
The best appetizer of all was Artichoke Chaat from the a la carte. The grey look of this dish exterior, like an autumnal heap, does not do justice to the virtuosic flavour and texture matching within. They could have done one grey semicircle, and the other half showing the subterranean green and red but I guess the kitchen can say they were simply looking to replicate the grey unremarkable exterior of an actual Jerusalem artichoke. Artichoke skin has been roasted and dehydrated for a crunchy twang. This nicely contrasts with the star of the dish - gentle morsels of Jerusalem artichoke, beautifully sweet with mellow earthy notes, so soft in a tender-crisp way, a true example of God's gift to earth, carefully cooked by the chef. A vibrant green sauce of coriander-'n'-mint tied the elements together, but another brilliant touch here was sweet diamonds of pomegranate peeping through the spiced verdant blanket.
The drinks program at Aarth is a compact affair and was presented to me on a tablet. The red wine and white wine list is one page each (best of luck with the brevity) whereas the cocktail list is more enticing. Creativity is rife here - 'Feijoa Shikanji' - vodka-based, served alongside a scoop of feijoa sorbet finished with chilli salt, 'Naga-Rita' - a 'refined margarita twist' with yuzu and ghost chilli vinegar shrub in place of triple sec ! I opted for 'Chicken & Chai' and fine-dining boy was it a sophisticated bewitcher ! Whiskey was fat-washed with chicken, layered with spiced chai cream and cardamom - synthesizing a creamy smooth beauty of a cocktail that blended buttery savoury notes with the hefty sharpness of whisky - one of the best cocktails I have had in Auckland.
A fairly filling monkfish composition featured as the pre-main on the degustation. The best component was a saffron moilee sauce that quietly sang with its coconut-milk-based sauce flavoured with a mellow tropical spice melange - which would be a revelation to a French chef as to how good an Indian sauce can be. Cameos from charred okra to bits of prawn in their own spice mix interested the blended bite, alas the softly meaty monkfish itself was under-seasoned and quiet. What's the use of a painstaking composition like this if a well-seasoned fish and chips tastes better?
A generous and thoughtfully constructed main course featured duck, served with a very shapely looking Khmeri Naan - circular, fluffy-soft and stuffed with mashed potato - alongside a polished ceramic pot of flavoured rice humming with caramelized onion (on another occasion, it was a more elaborately flavoured biryani rice ; the stuffed designer naan and flavoured rice come with all main courses). Again the sauce shone - "Nihari" is usually a silken saucy fatty wonder made from mutton and aromatic spices, but here synthesized from the same duck, the silken gelatin finery superbly replicated. Tiny blueberries cut the richness. I hate to report the marquee ingredient of duck was chewy - chef Vinayak Shah trained with top chef Sid Sahrawath and I don't think Sahrawath would greenlight this caliber of duck.
The Paneer main course (cottage cheese) featured gorgeously soft house-made paneer - pillowy hunks with creamy melting delicacy - a world away from the relatively firm paneer you get served even in good restaurants. A lush smooth sauce flavoured with fenugreek was another asset, although this could have been taken up another notch with some acidity.
Service is run by young, keen and pleasant staff. They do a good job but the ineffable difference between good service and immaculate service is nitpickingly noted when one reflects on the highest standards. This will only be achievable here when the managerial minds involved aspire to deliver exacting and the most polished level of hospitality (which I experienced this year in 'Return' in Auckland).
The pre-dessert was so good I wouldn't mind finishing with this alone. The inside of a feijoa had things done to it that would have flabbergasted a local. The fruit's flesh is all scooped out, and refilled with feijoa mishti doi (mishti doi is a Bengali dessert of reduced milk and brown sugar). Jewel-like little yellow cuts of rockmelon added variety to the bite, alongside an intense sweet-'n'-tart sauce.
The degustation's second dessert was as good as anything produced before by this hard-working cutting-edge kitchen. Pineapple was thinly ribbed and a little caramelized, then folded like a large yellow rose and parked atop a chilled creamy base of mango custard and sheep's milk sorbet. While digging through these three types of sweetness in this multi-faceted alpine beauty, my pleasure reached its zenith on tasting the fourth sweetness of buried bits of gulab jamun (cloud-soft rose-syrup-soaked little dumplings). You can't fault them for relentless creativity.
For the very last dish which was a dessert from the a la carte, the law of averages caught up again with this kitchen that is still learning to transcend the pull of gravity. Dark Chocolate & Cherries is a bewitching combination, richness upon richness, which has been smashed out of the park from restaurants as far afield as Napier's Central Fire Station Bistro. Aarth, however, dropped the ball on this one. Chocolate ganache lacked depth, interspersed macerated plums were too acidic and detracted from the chocolate, whereas a plum ice cream with cherry sauce was good but not near the caliber of the previous two desserts.
Auckland is lucky to have a place like Aarth, and it will get luckier when Aarth continues to improve its already high standards. A more exacting eye as to what makes any given dish a top-tier culinary ticket (admittedly the realm of only the most obsessed chefs) will help this establishment. This is only Vinayak Shah & Team's first year running their own fine-dining restaurant, and one can only imagine what larks may transpire in the upcoming years with the constant pursuit of an uncompromised vision.
Aarth - 1/333 Parnell Road, Parnell. aarth.co.nz
This is the writer’s personal observation and not an endorsement by Chow Luck Club.
