149 Pt Chevalier Road,
Pt Chevalier
Auckland,


(09) 846 5303

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4 out of 5

Here is everything you expect in a suburban Italian restaurant:

Plenty of parking outside; interior wooden tables squeezed close together in a small space; walls decorated with posters and mementos of the old country; and cheesy Italian ballads play on the stereo.

There’s lots of cheese on the menu too—and cream—in the extensive list of Italian standards, though there are no pizzas here at Café Latte.

The night we visited, there was a large selection of daily specials as well, recited to us by our exuberant waitress.

Chef-owner Ciro Sannino keeps an eye on his dining room from the pass, and will occasionally come out to help out with service and chat with customers.

No prices were given for the specials, but they sounded great, so we chose several grilled baby octopus, which we have enjoyed before and intended to share as a starter.

But this had just run out, so we replaced it with scallops ($22.50) which were crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside and served with a blue cheese-based sauce studded with capers.

Rigatoni amatriciana ($14.50 for an entrée size, large enough as a main for someone with a small appetite) featured tubular pasta cooked perfectly al dente, coated in a rich tomato-bacon-chilli sauce and then grilled until crispy on top. It pleased my companion.

My special of lamb cacciatora ($29.50) was also a large, but not an over-the-top portion. The nuggets of lamb were cooked until meltingly tender and served in a creamy, tangy sauce.

Most mains had a small portion of salad in one corner of the plate, but we ordered a green salad ($6.50), in which Sannino acknowledged seasonality by omitting mid-winter tomatoes and replacing them with pickled vegetables.

There’s no wine list at Café Latte. Instead, you choose from the bottles displayed along one of the walls. They’re all mass-produced Italian wines, and this evening they had two varietal whites and two reds available by the glass. We had a syrah and a merlot ($8.50 each), which went down well with all the dishes.

As the mid-week early dinner rush ended and the restaurant emptied of happy customers, dessert called.

My companion had profiteroles, and I had brandy snaps ($8 each). Both were heavy on spray-can cream and bought-in raspberry and chocolate sauces, but made an enjoyable end to a meal with no pretences to fine dining.

Honesty and friendliness are the most-used ingredients here.