Clooney 2006-2019
The last thing I ever ate at Clooney is the thing that will forever stand out in my mind as an emblem for the restaurant’s 13 years in business. It was 11pm on a Tuesday, the end of a three-hour degustation, and the final dish came out, described on the menu as “the mandarin”. I’d seen them coming out all evening, little bright orange balls, about a third bigger than a standard mandarin. It arrived on a grey stone-like plate, perfectly dimpled, with a real mandarin stem pressed gently into the top.
By the time you read this, Clooney, a glamorous fine-dining restaurant in Auckland’s Freemans Bay, will probably have closed, after 13 years in business. Owner Tony Stewart announced the news in August, via a press release and an exclusive interview with Jesse Mulligan in the , in which he revealed he suffers from cystic fibrosis and is one of 52 people with the disease to survive past 50 in this country.
