Charming Waiters and Creative Cooking Impresses

Auckland café Ortolana’s “Perfect Brunch” features in The Monocle Food & Entertaining Guide 2013, included as a supplement in the current issue of the magazine. “Ortolana is small and airy – just 80 square metres including the kitchen. Much of the produce comes from the owner’s farm, about 30 minutes outside the city. Owners Scott Brown and Jackie Grant spent most of their careers working in five and six-star hotels, finally working in China. [Ortolana has] gained a reputation for charming waiters and creative cooking: eggs benedict with devilled kidneys, say, or folded egg with home-smoked mackerel. Ortolana is open seven days a week from seven in the morning until 11 at night, so it’s the sort of place you can drop in on without thinking too hard about what time of day it is. You can get breakfast any time until well after lunch. “It’s a good meal,” Grant says. “There should always be room for breakfast.” Ortolana’s soft folded egg, smoked mackerel and capers recipe is included in the article. Brown and Grant are directors of the Hip Group, which includes Café on Kohi and St Heliers Bay Bistro.