Trevor Pepys reviews Season Restaurant and Bar, Hastings Street
The visitors from Down South were staying at Netanya and dining their way along the boardwalk at tables with a view. They’d already done Sails and Bistro C before they got to us, so over a beer at the surf club, Trev suggested dinner at Season the following night.Now it had been quite a while, it’s true, but Trev had fond memories of some excellent lunches in Season’s early days, looking up the length of Main Beach from a front table or watching the promenade along the front while munching on fresh seafood (it always seemed to be fish) and sipping from Season’s always excellent wine list. But walking in from the boardwalk the other evening, Trev hardly recognized the place, thanks to a major renovation 18 months ago. Owned by the Goodger family since 2003, Season was probably well overdue, but to these old eyes it looked like a little of the Noosa caz had been sacrificed for city swish.
While we surveyed the menu we decided to go Kiwi on the wine, the down south better half opting for a glass of Nanny Goat Otago pinot noir ($13), and the rest of us tackling a chilled bottle of Wairua River pinot gris ($66). Both delicious. On Trev’s advice (based on ancient memory) we elected to stick with the seafood, starting with share plates of the salt and pepper squid with aioli, coriander and mint ($19) and the sashimi of kingfish, with mandarin, mirin, cucumber and fennel ($40).
Although at the time the squid presented as merely adequate, over the rest of the dinner it would stand out as a culinary triumph. One of Trevor’s pet hates, as regular readers would be aware, is sashimi that isn’t. The traditional Japanese dish has stood unadorned for centuries, kept on a slurry of ice and presented with a minimum of fuss with soy sauce and wasabi or ground ginger. If you want to tart it up, call it raw fish or invent a new name, because it’s not sashimi. Our raw kingfish was confusing and bland.
Moving onto the mains, the missus went for the Atlantic salmon fishcakes with watercress, beets, witlof, caper lemon crème fraiche and pickled onion ($40) while the rest of us were talked into the pan-fried fish special, which was swordfish instead of the listed snapper, served with salsa verde, yellow beans, tomato, olives, kipflers and snow peas ($44). To be honest, Trev was frothing over the arrival of the swordfish, one of his all-time favourites, but when it arrived after some time (and another bottle of the Wairua River), there was something not quite right about its texture. Instead of peeling off with the fork, it collapsed into a gluggy mess. It was neither over-cooked nor under-cooked, just gluggy and it went back.
Even the best restaurants in town (and Trev firmly believes that Season has enough runs on the board to be so classed) can have an off night, often because of a supplier issue, as appeared to be the case with our swordfish, and it is usually saved for the customer by the attitude of the staff. Our manager couldn’t have been more apologetic or obliging. As he whisked our plates away, Trev suggested he bring back just one plate of the fish, unadorned. He did, and it was the same. He was as disappointed as we were. We moved on to the fishcakes (pretty good) and then finished with coconut pannacotta ($15) all round.
The verdict: Look, Trev tells it like it was, and this was something of a disaster, but it was also a triumph of goodwill in the face of adversity. The swordfish was taken off the bill, we had good wine, plenty of laughs and enough to eat. Most importantly, Season’s staff handled the situation with admirable aplomb. It wasn’t their fault, but they took full responsibility and made their guests evaluate the experience in a way quite unlike what might have been the case.
Trevor will return.
