Supra is the restaurant of chef and owner Thom Millot, now settled at 82A Tory Street in Te Aro after outgrowing a seventeen seat room on Dixon Street. That first home had a kitchen built around a single charcoal oven and a small induction hob, so fire did most of the work and the cooking was shaped by what the space allowed. The move gave Millot a dining room three times the size, with high ceilings and textured walls painted a blue so deep it reads almost black, along with the storage, refrigeration and room for fermentation that the old site could never hold.
Millot looks for the most logical thing to do with each ingredient and has little time for garnish that serves no purpose. Before Supra he cooked at Amok, where his food was louder, and he boils that style down to acid, spice and smoke, some of which is finding its way back onto the menu. The plates tend to look plain, with only a few components in view, yet there is a lot of work hidden in each one. Smaller dishes might include Marlborough oysters with a cucumber and white soy mignonette, snapper carpaccio with blood orange ponzu and nori, and lamb tsukune glazed with black garlic.
The focaccia, baked tall with charred edges and served with a Kiwi onion whip, is close to a signature, and mussels escabeche from Mills Bay come sharp and hot with a green garlic emulsion. Prawn toast is built on brioche and sits in pil pil, and a carpetbag steak tartare is piled onto crisp fried potato with a cured egg yolk sauce. Among the larger plates are grilled halloumi with grape salsa and a barbecued carrot mole, an octopus claypot with braised kombu, roast monkfish with butterbeans and cavolo nero, and the lamb Barnsley chop with fermented cabbage and lamb jus, which made the move from Dixon Street largely unchanged.
Desserts are brief and pointed: a poached pear with lime granita and white chocolate cremeux, roast pineapple with lemon curd and Italian meringue, and an Amok Rocher that shares its name with Millot’s earlier restaurant. A seven course tasting menu is available with a drink match that can be alcoholic or alcohol free, and there is a vegetarian version, though the kitchen cannot cook for vegans. Maru, a bar beside the dining room but separate from it, pours drinks from a list that includes vermouth and serves a few things from the restaurant menu, which suits a shorter visit or a drink before dinner.
Address: 82A Tory Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011
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