The space that Parro occupies comes with a bit of pressure. It’s scary enough opening a restaurant in this economy, but opening one in the Dominion Rd space that formerly housed Omni, a beloved yakitori wine bar frequently mentioned on this list, is its own very specific kind of daunting. 

Parro was opened in the middle of the year by chef Gleber Chaparro, who has previously worked at Amano, Lilian and Depot. Ahead of our first visit, we were nervous too. It would be so easy to be overshadowed by the ghost of former tenants. We were happy, then, to discover that Parro is brilliant in its own right. 

Aesthetically, the restaurant has hardly changed from its former incarnation: still a bright and sparsely decorated room with an open kitchen that allows you to observe the chefs working away, chopping, grilling, plating and so on.

The menu at Parro is Mediterranean inspired, and Chaparro has done an excellent job of melding the familiar marine brightness of those various culinary influences with an edgier, more mysterious vision of what Mediterranean food can look like. The menu is organised into five sections: starters (of which we endorse the cured raw fish and lamb sweetbread dishes), smalls, mains, charcoal grill and desserts. The charcoal grill, which uses a blend of three types of charcoal, is the key force behind the offerings, imbuing dishes with a momentous smoke and sear. That makes its presence felt in our favourite dish, the arroz bomba — a bowl of saucy rice, pickled mussels and charred prawns. As was true at Omni, the wine list is populated by natural wines — but there’s also, appropriately, Estrella Damm on tap.

Though Parro may have been open for only a few months, it’s already carved out a singular presence in the Tāmaki Makaurau dining scene — we’re excited to see where the team goes from here.