Slattery & Sons occupies the Wharf Police Building on Quay Street, one of the survivors of the old Britomart waterfront. The brick building, trimmed with Sydney sandstone, was built in 1903 as the New Zealand head office of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, and in the early 1960s the wharf police moved in and installed cells. By the 1980s it was earmarked for demolition, with the Auckland Harbour Board calling it “unlovely and shocking”, yet it was saved and is now a Category 1 historic place. The pub keeps much of that past on show, including the panelled police front offices, the reception counter and the strong room, while mahogany panelled nooks styled as cells play on its years as a station.
The idea behind the pub was to pair the warmth of a classic Irish local with the polish of modern hospitality, and whiskey sits at the centre of it. The team travelled widely to gather more than 100 Irish whiskeys, many of them unavailable anywhere else in New Zealand, and they share the shelves with Scotch from Islay, Speyside, Campbeltown and the Highlands as well as bottles from New Zealand, India and Japan. Guided tastings in the Whiskey Parlour can be tailored to a theme, from a beginner’s introduction to Irish, Scottish or local drams, and need to be booked ahead. At the bar, Guinness, Murphy’s and Kilkenny pour beside Tuatara beers and Monteith’s apple cider, and a stout list runs from Moa Imperial Stout to Panhead’s Blacktop oat stout.
Food follows the Irish pub tradition with a few New Zealand touches. Soda bread arrives with beef dripping butter, cold smoked salmon is served with toasted soda bread and capers, and the spice bag tosses salt and chilli chicken or fried pork belly with capsicum, onion, chunky chips and curry sauce. Black pudding and cheese tato tots and calamari fried with native horopito pepper make easy companions for a pint. The signature pie encases a whole lamb shank in golden pastry with mash and Guinness gravy, and only a limited number are made each day. Mains include a Dublin coddle of Irish pork sausages and root vegetables with colcannon mash, an Angus steak with a Jameson’s whiskey peppercorn sauce, and market fish in a beer batter with crushed peas, with vegetarian, vegan and no gluten options marked throughout.
Sundays are given over to the roast, the only menu served that day. Black Angus beef with whipped horseradish cream, a rosemary and garlic lamb rack with Nan’s mint sauce, sage and onion chicken with pigs in blankets, rolled pork with crackling and apples stewed in cider, or a nut and lentil loaf all come with Yorkshire pudding, beef fat roast potatoes, mash and gravy that keeps flowing, and the apple crumble is finished with warm whiskey custard. Traditional Irish music plays through the afternoon. The rest of the week brings cocktails on tap, among them an espresso martini, along with spritzes and a wine list that leans on Marlborough, Central Otago and Hawke’s Bay. With Spark Arena a short walk away, the pub fills before and after shows, and its private rooms, the Snug and the rooftop bar host plenty of functions.
Address: Wharf Police Building, 102 Quay Street, Britomart, Auckland Central, Auckland 1010
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