WOP: Eating the other cheek

Miss Hun­gry & Frozen said the oth­er day “I think cheeks are the new shanks”. Read­ing var­i­ous Dine menus for Welling­ton on Plate, they are indeed every­where. You won’t hear a com­plaint about that from me. Instead, you get to read about how I had beef cheeks for lunch and then din­ner on Thurs­day.

Atlanta

The Ter­race is not nor­mal­ly a place I would vis­it for the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of eat­ing, but as I had an appoint­ment there and then some time to kill, I saw a Welling­ton on a Plate sign out, so I looked up what Atlanta were offer­ing, and decid­ed that I want­ed to go to there. It was 11.30am at the time, so the love­ly wait­ress said the kitchen would­n’t be ready for about anoth­er 15 min­utes. That was fine with me, so she brought me a paper and my glass of Julich­er Sav Blanc. I chose the toma­to, bean and chori­zo soup, which was accom­pa­nied by some of the nicest bread I’ve had in ages. They’d lose a cou­ple of style points for the but­ter being in one of those lit­tle packs, except I sup­pose it makes sense for a cafe that does a roar­ing trade in take­out cof­fee and muffins. The soup itself had a bit of spice to it, and was a nice thing to eat on a cold day. Then it was time for the beef cheeks. They came out in a shim­mer­ing pool of gravy, with what called itself four-cheese polen­ta cake. The cheeks were love­ly. Cooked for 24 hours, they fell to shreds with the poke of a spoon. Rich, gelati­nous and deli­cious, com­fort food at its best. The polen­ta, mean­while, was strange­ly taste­less, the only cheese notice­able was that melt­ed on top, which was like a super­mar­ket edam. Luck­i­ly, the gravy was so flavour­some.  At $25, it was a very good meal, with love­ly ser­vice. If you’re near the Ter­race and look­ing to get warmed up from the inside, I’d rec­om­mend this meal.

Bettys [sic]

I’m glad I was smart enough to book for Bet­tys, as the Cock­tail Canape Crawl was in that night as well. Bet­tys is pre­dom­i­nant­ly a bar, but they do great food as well, out of the Hum­ming­bird kitchen. The only menu they were offer­ing was the Welling­ton on a Plate selec­tion, but as long as you’re a car­ni­vore, you’re going to be well hap­py. Our beef cheek ravi­o­li took an awful­ly long time to arrive, but our wait­ress was real­ly apolo­getic, and we had the ever­chang­ing video walls to watch, and deli­cious Mar­t­in­bor­ough Vine­yard Pinot Noir to sip, so we did okay. The ravi­o­li was served as a sin­gle piece, ooz­ing out the chest­nut puree. The Angus beef cheek fill­ing was tasty, but not par­tic­u­lar­ly cheeky — it could have been any kind of slow­cooked beef in that form, real­ly.

But the main course, oh my god oh my god oh my god! Again, it took ages to come out — appar­ent­ly the Hum­ming­bird kitchen was slammed, but oh wow, it was worth the wait for our Tararua Ranges wild veni­son pie with parsnip purée and braised red cab­bage. The pas­try was flakey and crunchy and melty all at once, and did­n’t go sog­gy when you poured (prob­a­bly unnec­es­sary) extra gravy over it. The veni­son was full of rich gamey flavour, and was absolute­ly ten­der and just amaz­ing. The parsnip puree and braised red cab­bage were per­fect accom­pa­ni­ments, and it all went won­der­ful­ly with the wine match. Every mouth­ful was bliss. I am drool­ing now just writ­ing about it. This pie will be on my mind for a long time, I can tell you.

We also ordered dessert for an extra $10, choco­late tart with love­ly cher­ries, which arrived quick­ly. The dark choco­late tart was a lit­tle salty as an extra treat, and served with sweet­ened cream since it was quite bit­ter­sweet. Again, deli­cious, one of the best choco­late tarts I’ve had. It would have been great with the wine, if I’d had any of my gen­er­ous pour left. So so good, I can­not rec­om­mend this meal enough. Get there ASAP because there aren’t a lot of tables, and Bet­tys is only open from Wednes­day-Sun­day. Just be aware that because it is most­ly a bar, it’s fair­ly loud so not ide­al for those who are hard of hear­ing. And because it’s dark, it’s not best for food blog­gers want­i­ng to take good pho­tos either! I’ll be going back for their reg­u­lar menu as soon as pos­si­ble — and also to claim my free cock­tail that the wait­er promised me because they could­n’t find their Visa Welling­ton on a Plate scratch & win cards that I should have been enti­tled to for pay­ing with my cred­it card.