29 Nuffield Street,
Newmarket
Auckland,


(09) 524 4975

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4 out of 5

Wanted. A new name for the bar upstairs from Wagamama restaurant in Nuffield St in Newmarket. At present it's just called the Wagamama Cocktail Bar and tends to function as a waiting area for diners heading downstairs to eat at the nouveau noodle bar. But with an intimate and cosy interior, and some of Auckland's more eclectic cocktails, the bar deserves to be far more popular.

On a windswept and rainy Saturday night, Wagamama's buzzy shared tables and hearty bowls of noodles are the perfect antidote. Past experience has demonstrated their speedy restaurant service is almost too efficient, so we adjourn upstairs to the bar to make the night last a little longer.

Apparently Thursday and Friday nights are popular, and the compact space fills up nicely with revellers happy to party to a no surprises musical mix of early Radiohead, (when they used to write real songs with real melodies), the Doors, and the soundtrack to Pulp Fiction. Tonight's a bit sparser with just five couples, but even that's enough to give the smallish room a cosy ambience. Comfy bench seats surround a central bar amidst cherry-red decor and delicate lighting.

Despite Wagamama's Tokyo via London roots, there's a quirky Kiwi spin to the cocktail list heavy on local puns. I forego a draft Kirin beer for a Flight of the Conrad, a twist on a Mojito with the addition of Midori and Italian sparkling blood orange juice. Wagamama's version of a Slush Puppy won't be seen soon at your local cinema multiplex, and it's a zingy combo of lime, grapefruit and passiofruit (I'm pretty sure there was more than a little vodka in there as well). If Asian-tinged cocktails don't appeal there's the acquired taste of hot or cold sake, or a concise wine list of just 20 wines that covers all the bases with vineyards like Trinity Hill and Mt Difficulty.

Not wanting to leave such a cosy haven, we delay our inevitable relocation downstairs by ordering some bar snacks. Ebi gyoza (prawn and water chestnut dumplings) and chilli fried squid demand a crisp Sapporo beer. Noodle-time will just have to wait.

Good bars are thin on the ground in Newmarket, but Wagamama's cocktail bar already does a lot of things really well. All it needs is a new name so drinkers can say meet you at... Ideas on a Kirin beer mat please.