This small pasta restaurant serves handmade perfection in every dish.

Arte Della Pasta is a unique restaurant with unique operating hours. Dinner is served for one early, short session each evening, yet it’s genuinely hard to get in; on two separate occasions, I failed to find a table for two.
This time I got lucky with a 7pm booking, though when we arrived there was a new problem: the restaurant had been almost entirely bought out by a group of engineers on the lash. I feared/hoped there might not be enough room for us this time either but, in a restaurant first, the waiter scurried away and returned with a folded table and some chairs. He set them up and we were in business.

Arte Della Pasta is owned and operated by chef Mirella Kostandini. Photo / Babiche Martens

This is the Arte Della Pasta approach to hospitality: there is a way things are done, but if necessary somebody will go get a table from the cupboard. The central figure is owner and chef Mirella Kostandini, a stylish northern Italian with 25 years of cooking behind her, who moves around the restaurant with the authority of somebody who has made every piece of food you are eating and is prepared to answer questions, though not necessarily as you might have hoped.

“How do you cook the chicken?” I asked. “It is SO tender.”

“I have my ways,” she replied.

Later: “How do you make the tiramisu?” “Is old recipe.” “Yes, but how do you do it?” A pause. “I use pasteurised eggs.”

Pasta is everywhere: hanging decoratively from a string, geographically arranged by origin over a map of Italy, bagged up on the counter and, most usefully, available to eat from the kitchen.

The titular “arte” is not “art” in the Sid Sahrawat sense but there is at least a little more colour and personality than you get in your standard pasta joint. The menu is long, with specials and a lasagne of the day, and there is also a list of sauces and corresponding shapes.

Everything is made by hand and tastes brilliant, so I was surprised when Mirella told me she never wanted to open for dinner. The dream was to make and sell fresh pasta and run cooking classes, but New Zealanders didn’t go for the business model. So now she has a 25-seat restaurant full of people like me asking what she puts in the tiramisu.

The penne amatriciana on the menu at Arte Della Pasta. Photo / Babiche Martens

We began with focaccia, much lighter than the usual version and golden in a way that made me wonder if it had been toasted in butter. It came with not quite enough extra virgin olive oil, with the curious result that we ended up savouring and enjoying our tiny dish of it even more than if it had been in abundance.

The pasta sauces are tight and integrated. Nothing is particularly flashy but everything has depth. Even the house tomato sauce leans towards savoury rather than a bright, acidic hit.

My confusingly tender chicken penne was fragrant with rosemary and sage and finished with salty, white ricotta salata – a little hat-wave to Puglia in the south. It was creamy but only barely. Was there even cream in the sauce? I would have called back Mirella, but by then I’d taken the hint.

An amatriciana (tomatoes/chilli/guanciale/pecorino/pasta ) was incredible – the rendered guanciale used as the basis of a glossy sauce, with the crunchy bits of leftover pork jowl sprinkled over the dish at the end.

Arte Della Pasta's winter orange and artichoke salad. Photo / Babiche Martens

But the surprise of the night was the salad: bold and beautiful, with burrata, winter orange and globe artichokes, a species now threatened with extinction in New Zealand restaurants. When you do find them they usually taste of brine but not here, where they are served in something closer to their natural state, and with generosity (they ruin the wine for a few minutes but it’s worth it). The salad was finished with some streaks of syrupy balsamic.

Finally the tiramisu, which arrived round, like a stack of pancakes. “I cut it up how I like it,” Mirella explained, sort of. It was light and classic, made with ladyfingers she bakes herself and a coffee blend she has negotiated with a supplier particularly for this purpose (I could have sworn I tasted liquor too, but apparently there is none). Another dessert was just as indulgent: panettone (or close enough) soaked in mandarin syrup then cut into long triangles and slathered with pistachio cream.

Arte Delle Pasta's pannetone-pistachio dessert. Photo / Babiche Martens

Mirella doesn’t quite do this all on her own. Our other waiter was very good despite/because of having a moustache that twirled into two Salvador Dalí-style aerials at the end. The one thing he forgot was cutlery, which he dealt with in good humour when I pointed it out. Honestly, it’s not the end of the world if you have to ask for a fork.

The whole place has such an unexpected charm to it that I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get here. I will be back – for the pasta, but even more for the person who makes the pasta, who made one final stop past our table to say goodbye on the way out.

As she left, my daughter leaned across the table to me.

“Did she just change her whole outfit?” she asked me.

“No,” I said. “She put on a scarf.”

Address: 21C Remuera Rd, Newmarket

Contact: 09 948 0450, artedellapasta.com, @arte_dellapasta

Operating hours: Tue-Wed 11am-7pm; Thu-Sat 11am-8pm

From the menu: focaccia $7.50, penne chicken and mushroom $30, penne amatriciana $32, spaghetti “semplice” $24, Pugliese salad $22, tiramisu $16, “sapori di Sicilia” pudding $17

Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Outstanding, don’t delay.

According to Dining Out editor Jesse Mulligan.