Prego at 40: Why Aucklanders keep coming back to the Ponsonby Rd favourite
For 40 years, Prego has fed an entire generation of Aucklanders.
“Drama is everywhere in hospitality,” Brandon Lela’ulu, general manager at Prego tells me when I ask about the juiciest stories to come out of the restaurant in its 40 years of operation on Ponsonby Road.
“I don’t know why, or how they got there, but we did find a pair of women’s underwear on the roof when we were doing the renovations. Apparently no one knows where they came from,” he pauses thoughtfully.
“I’m sure children have been conceived at Prego. In fact, we’ve had three pregnant mums have their waters break at the same table – table 17. It’s like, do not sit there if you’re pregnant.”
Prego’s reputation precedes itself. We’re a pretty young city. We don’t have the 100-year-old restaurants like New York or London, but if Auckland was to have a grand dame, I think most would probably say it was Prego. If you want to know where to eat in the city, it’s highly likely locals will, at some point, steer you in the direction of this institution.
Where else can you have tables of rosé-sipping late lunchers slipping out just as young families arrive with kids to settle in for pizzas and Shirley Temples, making their way home for bedtime as the night owls head in for a martini at the bar while they wait for their preferred table to open up. Prego is a rare jewel; unfussy yet glamorous, timeless without being staid.
First opened in October 1986, the Ponsonby that Prego arrived into is very different to the one it occupies today.
The suburb is now a nightlife hotspot, for one. The demographic has shifted, too. But, as Lela’ulu tells me, they “kind of live in a bubble” at Prego.
“The restaurant is always evolving. You know, you might say, oh we haven’t seen so and so in a while, and then suddenly they come back in and they’ve been living overseas for 10 years.”
“I can walk down the street to go and get some lunch and bump into an eight year old who will go, ‘Hi Brandon’,” Lela’ulu says with a laugh.
“It’s fantastic. And, you know, I’ll know their parents, I’ll know their cousins. But it’s actually a lot deeper; people celebrate their special occasions here, their weddings, their birthdays, or even after someone passes away.
“So I feel very proud and honoured to be part of that community.”
He tells me about kids growing up and coming in on dates or with friends when they finally become old enough to go out on their own.
“We make a real effort. They might just come in and have a pizza bread, but they’ll have the best service.”
It’s an echo of my experience. I was one of those kids who grew up coming to Prego.
It’s where we’d go for almost all our birthdays, where I had my first glass of wine with dinner, and where I quickly rejected the kids’ menu in favour of the grown-up dishes, much to the frustration of my parents’ bank account, I’m sure.
I would go there with my friends for dinners at 18 when we were freshly legal and felt very grown-up and glamorous, and with dates as I got older. It’s the place I’d ask to eat whenever I was home on my university holidays.
And then I moved to London and, with the exception of the odd visit, I didn’t go to Prego for the better part of eight years.
Yet, when I moved home at the end of last year, I was embraced once more by the restaurant.
The menu had changed slightly – a few dishes had been removed or added, and the classics section had been absorbed into the wider menu – but apart from that, the restaurant remained blissfully, reliably unchanged.
And I’m certainly not alone. Prego has collected a number of regulars over the years.
“There’s families where I’ll see one member of that family for lunch, and then I’ll see another one at dinner getting takeaways. Then someone will come in for a drink at the bar. They’ll be getting kids meals here and they’ll be getting margaritas there. There’s actually a couple of families like that,” Lela’ulu says.
We bumped into one diner upon my arrival who, Lela’ulu tells me, is at the restaurant every day.
“Sometimes he’ll come in for lunch, and then he’ll come back in for dessert later on in the day.”
Then there’s the couple who have come to Prego every day for dinner for decades. It might, to those not familiar with the restaurant, seem ridiculous. But, Lela’ulu tells me, for the team at Prego it’s an honour that people trust them enough to feel safe there.
“My first time at Prego, I was 6 weeks old,” content creator and author Cassandra Grodd tells me. “I then came weekly with my parents until I was old enough to come without them.”
She tells me about bringing her boyfriend to the restaurant for one of their first dates early this year.
“I waltzed him into a busy Saturday afternoon lunch session. We walked straight into Brandon who looked up and said ‘You know she was practically born here’,” she says, with a laugh.
She can even recite her order: “Oysters, always. Pizza bread to share, or a calamari.” She mentions the margherita pizza, the saltimbocca and, in winter, the Prego pie. And, to finish, a sticky date pudding. She also specifically requests the return of the old pollo pizza – something Lela’ulu says is a regular occurrence.
“Anything attached to the word ‘change’ at Prego is generally going to have a negative effect,” he explains. “We took the chicken saltimbocca off the menu temporarily and I think somebody started a Facebook page that went ‘bring back the saltimbocca’.”
He tells me about guests coming in and ordering versions of dishes that were on the menu decades ago, and that as much as the kitchen will allow, they’ll always try to accommodate these requests.
When I was 14 or so, I wrote the kitchen a letter requesting they put the original Prego loaf of bread back on the menu, so incensed I was about its replacement by a ciabatta that, in my adolescent eyes, was an enormous step back.
“I think I still have that letter somewhere,” Lela’ulu tells me. “Taking that loaf off was a big one.”
There’s a misconception, among diners, that Prego remains unchanged. But the menu that existed here in the 80s is very different to the one served today. There was grilled chicken breast and steamed vegetables. It was, Lela’ulu says, “very 80s. Very meat and three vege.”
The changes are often subtle, done so in pursuit of progression in the quality of the food offered, or seasonal depending on the produce coming in. The fact that the restaurant remains so deceptively similar to how it did 40 years ago, that it is both seemingly unchanging and reliable, is a key facet of its success.
But it’s also about how the team welcome diners with open arms.
“Prego has always looked after its people in a real, welcome and easy way,” Grodd tells me. “It’s special to people because it makes them feel special, and has done so consistently, across literal decades, from infants to being parents themselves.”
More food and drink
The people behind the places we like to eat at.
‘If you want fries, I don’t give a s***’: Michelin star chef’s bold new Ponsonby venture. Matt Lambert will not pander to your comfort eating needs.
Mother, Lilian, Hotel Ponsonby and Hugo Baird’s Grey Lynn hospo legacy. Aucklanders are fickle diners. How do you build something they’ll queue for?
Aarth, Parnell: First look inside Vicky Shah’s new modern Indian restaurant. He’s cooked at Cassia, Kol and Sidart. Now he’s going it alone in Parnell.
Does Auckland need another Italian restaurant? Mimi Gilmour Buckley thinks so. Why the Burger Burger queen is banking on spaghetti and a disco ball.