Tango Pizza and Pasta Bar

Tango, Grey Lynn – Restaurant Review


Food

Still on the search for a good Italian restaurant, on a cool Thursday evening we met with friends at Tango, which has popped up where Nandos (and briefly a Mexican restaurant) used to be on Surrey Crescent. We kicked off with some pizza bread and arancini, which are risotto croquettes filled with mozzarella - both were good starters. For our mains, we had some reasonable ravioli (with spinach and ricotta), a very good potato gnocchi in a cream and gorgonzola sauce with walnuts, and a disappointing gnocchi off the specials menu (pumpkin and ricotta with grilled vegetables and mushroom cream). This was far too rich with a sauce that tasted like beef stock, completely destroying any other flavours it may have had. The presentation of both gnocchi dishes was pretty bad, the gnocchi spread out on a flat plate like someone has spilled it on there by mistake.


Vibe

Reasonably busy when we arrived, we were the only people there when we left Tango at 8:30pm. Our original table had us sitting both next to the toilet door and staring straight at the kitchen sink, so we moved ourselves to the front window which was much better. There were some major vibe killers however, the main culprit being the lighting which was far too bright and simply showed up the not-so-Italian surroundings. The music playing throughout was OK but would stop altogether for long periods or on a few occasions the CD would skip for long periods of time before being fixed.


Drinks

A short but interesting wine list, offering wines from Spain, Italy and Argentina. On advice from our friends who had recently returned from Buenos Aires, we went for a nice little Argentinean Malbec.


Service

Very friendly and helpful throughout, though this tailed off towards the end where we were offered the dessert menu but never had any follow-up (which meant that we went down the road to Mondial instead).


Highlights

The wine list and the on-the-menu gnocchi.


The Bottom Line

Tango was all a bit disappointing. I really wanted to love this place, especially as a good Italian restaurant (other than Delicious) would be a great asset in Grey Lynn. Some swift work required here if this isn't going to go the same way as its predecessors.

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