There aren’t that many restaurants in Auckland where a celebrity chef will carve your steak up tableside — but that is on offer at Advieh, the new InterContinental Hotel restaurant helmed by Gareth Stewart. Tucked away in Commercial Bay, Advieh is housed in a space that is made swanky with its sensual curves and moody shadows, evoking the feeling of an international restaurant. It’s not immediately obvious from the décor that what’s on offer is an interpretation of Middle Eastern cuisine, swept through with plenty of tahini, harissa, filo and za’atar, but that’s what you’ll find. (Of course, the name is a hint — ‘advieh’ is a Persian spice blend.)

As we’ve found with lots of places in Tāmaki, the snacks are the standout: that already famous crispy kataifi, a fat crispy cigar of scampi and crayfish; the earthy lamb shish; the bite-sized chicken liver baklava. It’s all flavour, flavour, flavour right out the gate, which you then follow with hunks of beautiful protein like a whole dry-aged duck, or bone-in ribeye (which, as mentioned earlier, may be served to you by Stewart himself).

In the drinks list, we are particularly delighted by the array of minute cocktails, smaller versions of negronis and martinis, at $13 a pop, that we imagine were conceived for well-behaved business lunches. A minute horopito-infused negroni and lamb-neck shawarma? Sounds like an ideal lunch to us.