Tasca Newmarket

TASCA (in Spanish) means an unpretentious, local, backstreet bar / eatery, offering a few tapas to accompany the drinking (and gambling!) that goes on until the small hours.

Here in Auckland, Café Tasca started life as a tiny café bar in Upper Vulcan Lane in the heart of the city – so named because of it’s resemblance of the location (the closest of any that we have here in NZ) to the alleyways and back streets of the old cities of Europe. With the opening of a second Tasca in 2006, in Nuffield St Newmarket, comes a much larger café but with differently styled spaces – the Moroccan tiled porch, the back lounge with potbelly fireplace, the woodsy dining room…All this combines to create an ambience at once relaxed and casual, colourful and comfortable – perfect for an after work glass of wine, coffee and brunch with friends, or that get-together for 20 people that you’ve been planning… And then, in Spring 2008, and going back to its smaller roots, Tasca brought its same colourful atmosphere to Dominion Road in Mount Eden – a cosy lived in café street side, revealing a rambling courtyard olive garden as you venture past the kitchen – all sorts of summer possibilities come to mind…

The proprietors – a Spaniard, Turks and Kiwis – have opted to concentrate more on the food, wine and coffee than the gambling! With the main influences coming from the simple tasty foods of Spain (much of it cooked in the woodfired oven), other tastes have crept into the menu – yet all in keeping with the simple philosophy of Mediterranean eating – real food with not too much done to it. A selection of tapas – ideally shared over the evening, not all at once – could fit the mood, washed down with a jug of homemade Sangria. Or settle in for a major meal with a bottle of Spanish red – the Cordero (wood roasted lamb shoulder) basted with pomegranate molasses and harissa, just falls off the bone…

THE POMEGRANATE,

in Latin “punica granatum” – ‘apple of many seeds’, our chosen logo, inspired by the city of Granada in Andalucia, Spain – the pomegranate is the city’s symbol. Depicted everywhere in the city, especially the gypsy quarter, from the handpainted ceramic tiles to mosaic paving stones, the pomegranate was brought to Spain by the Moors. Origin of the words ‘grenade’ and ‘garnet’, the fruit’s name in Spanish is actually ‘granada’ – the namesake of the city.

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