After a long day at work, it feels good to know that you can slide into a seat at Ponsonby Road Bistro and be completely taken care of. With service that shows the bistro has been in business a long time (now in its tenth year, in fact), we can trust that the front-of-house staff will be there when we need them, and not when we don’t. It’s hard to get the balance right, but they do here.

The hand-scrawled menu, featuring classics that we know and love and a few that we don’t, reads comfortingly familiar, but with flashes of inspiration from all different kinds of cuisines. We like to start with the southern clams here; the broth they come in changes regularly (hence no menu description), but it will be hard to beat the version we had recently, where the clams were bathed in a traditional garlic, white wine and herb sauce. It would’ve been easy to finish the whole bowl by ourselves.

Perfectly cooked confit duck and steak are staples of Ponsonby Road Bistro, and both are obvious choices. But, again, we’re partial to the seafood here, wholeheartedly recommending whatever the market fish of the day is. We’re also keen on the impressive drinks menu, which offers plenty of crowd-pleasers by the glass, a healthy beer selection and, pleasingly, plenty of apéritifs to start your meal with. Lather, rinse and repeat.