The arrival of a new restaurant in Auckland’s CBD always carries a certain charge, particularly when it occupies a room with history built into its bones. Opening inside Fable Auckland, The Windsor Room takes its name from the building’s former life as Windsor House and introduces a polished new dining room to Queen Street, where Art Deco detailing, curtained nooks and a restrained sense of theatre set the tone for a menu inspired by the English chophouse.

The proposition is clear from the outset. Lunch and dinner lean into pan-European cooking with a distinctly English point of view, moving between a raw bar, coal-fired grill and the kind of dishes that feel instantly familiar without slipping into nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Clevedon oysters arrive with Champagne mignonette, Marlborough crab is paired with brown butter emulsion and cucumber jelly, while kingfish crudo is finished with fennel, dill and kawakawa oil.

From there, the menu becomes richer. Hand-cut beef tartare is sharpened with Worcestershire gel and cured egg yolk, while the Scotch egg folds black pudding and heritage pork beneath grain mustard cream and piccalilli. The French onion soup takes its time, built around a 72-hour consommé and gruyère custard, and bone marrow canoes arrive with parsley, shallot, caper and chilli garlic.

The grill provides the room’s real sense of occasion, with Pure South beef and lamb cooked over charcoal and served with the sauces that belong beside them: béarnaise, peppercorn, bone marrow, chimichurri and jus. The 55-day-aged rump heart, intended for two, comes with bone marrow canoes, while Yorkshire pudding with roast beef dripping and gravy, triple-cooked chips with black truffle aioli and Parmesan, and coal-roasted hispi cabbage bring the sort of generosity the format demands.

Pudding, quite rightly, has been given equal attention. Sticky toffee pudding comes with butterscotch velouté and clotted cream, Eton mess is layered with strawberry, raspberry and lemon Chantilly, and the English trifle keeps to the pleasures of sherry-soaked sponge, vanilla custard and berries.

The drinks list follows the same logic. Developed with sommelier Tony Suarez, it moves between France and New Zealand, with wines available by the glass, bottle and 375ml carafe, while cocktails reference the building’s former life, including The Duchess Blush, a strawberry and pink gin serve inspired by the soda factory that occupied the site in the 1950s.

What gives The Windsor Room its charm, however, is the way the food and room seem to agree with one another. The 1928 architecture remains legible through high ceilings, gilded touches and geometric mouldings, while the addition of enclosed corners and decorative objects gives the dining room a sense of intimacy that feels well suited to long lunches, proper dinners and the kind of city dining that still understands the pleasure of ceremony.

Breakfast begins early, High Tea continues daily, and the room moves through lunch, bar snacks and dinner as the day unfolds, giving this new opening more range than its evening appeal might first suggest.

cur-ate.co.nz/venue/the-windsor-room