Something to hum about

Hum­ming­bird has been on Cour­tenay Place for a long time (twelve years!), and has just under­gone a com­plete refur­bish­ment. The Wel­ling­tonista was invited along to check out the revital­ised space and new menu, and what we found was very very good.

In their own words:

The site was once, many dec­ades ago, a butcher­’s shop and in the pro­cess of peel­ing back all the room’s many lay­ers we found that shop’s ori­gin­al tiles and brick.  They were incor­por­ated in our design, and so the place is some­thing of a pal­impsest, with the old com­ing through to the new.

The new Hum­ming­bird has a lot more emphas­is on eat­ing, and much of the design has been aimed at mak­ing the din­ing room more com­fort­able.  We’ve also retained a whole new kit­chen team and so have a new food offer­ing, which is heavy on using good, loc­al pro­duce and try­ing not to do too much to it.

Our own words fol­low after the jump. Cau­tion: con­tent will con­tain mouth orgasms and make you hungry.

I had­n’t been to Hum­ming­bird for a long time, because I did­n’t think it was really the right bar for me. Jed from Hum­ming­bird acknow­ledges that it had become some­what known as ‘Cou­gar* Ter­rit­ory’ (and one of my din­ing com­pan­ions con­firmed that his work­mates had ‘warned’ him about this when he said that he was going to din­ner there), and so work has been done to change the atmo­sphere. The renov­a­tions have suc­ceeded in giv­ing the space much more of a res­taur­ant feel. Gone are the very ’90s purple walls and that annoy­ing curved screen at the door. Instead, walls have been taken out to make the bar area more airy, old tiles and brick are exposed, and tables are made from reclaimed scaf­fold­ing planks.  A gas fire makes the room lovely and warm on a freez­ing cold night. (The light­ing was­n’t very good for tak­ing pic­tures of food though, unfor­tu­nately, so you will have to ima­gine it, or bet­ter yet, go try it your­self!)

I ordered one of the nicest cock­tails I’ve had in a long time – a spiced old fash­ioned (Wil­let’s single bar­rel reserve bour­bon, spiced sug­ar, bit­ters) which came with a fire of its own, served with a flam­ing fig in the glass, and once it was sadly fin­ished, we went for the Hum­ming­bird house wine, a Pinot Noir avail­able by the glass, 500ml and 1000ml carafe. Sens­ible siz­ing!

The menus are simple, prin­ted on A3 paper.  “We wanted every­one to have the full menu on one page and also the cock­tails, and we wanted every­one to have easy access to the wine list.  The menus are all prin­ted in house because the dishes change a lot, ” says Jed.

Everything soun­ded deli­cious and we did­n’t know where to start, so we asked our lovely wait­ress Florence to ask the chef to send out whatever he felt we should eat. Best decision ever! A dozen Mahur­angi oysters (they also had Bluff avail­able) arrived at our table quickly, in their half shells on ice. I’m not a huge shell­fish fan, but I thought I’d give these a go. They were deli­cious with a little of the accom­pa­ny­ing sauce and a squeeze of lem­on, little fresh mouth­fuls of the sea. I’m still not sold on the tex­ture of oysters though, so I con­cen­trated on the fresh bread and yummy Olivo oil.

Next our table was covered in a selec­tion of grilled sour­dough that we divided into quar­ters and pounced on. I had nev­er had Waik­an­ae crab before – in fact, you don’t see crab on many res­taur­ant menus in NZ that I’m aware of (although I’ve some really good crab still in the shell at China Delight, and also soft shell crab tem­pura at Kura in Auck­land), but this was lovely. Sweet flesh, mixed with tasty aioli. Yummmm. The mush­rooms with marscapone had the depth of fla­vour of a thou­sand roast anim­als, which I dis­covered as I checked the menu again, was because the marscapone was truffled. Mean­while the duck neck saus­age and pep­pers was incred­ibly rich as well . Appar­ently duck neck saus­age is encased in itself, unlike a tra­di­tion­al saus­age. How­ever it’s made, it was deli­cious. Unex­pec­tedly, I even enjoyed the entree dish of Kapiti octopus with cho­ri­zo and beets. It tasted a lot like parsnip, which is a good thing.

The time between entrees and mains was well-judged, and once again, we divided the plates we received between the four of us. When Florence had told us about the spe­cials of the day earli­er on, she’d men­tioned that there were two kinds of aged beef avail­able – we were served the Wakanui Blue scotch fil­let, while there was also a petit angus fil­let from Hawke’s Bay. I don’t know all that much about the dif­fer­ent places, but I love that they do. Loc­al­ised eat­ing is so hot right now. And apart from that, the beef with its pur­eed auber­gine? Total mouth orgasm. I would­n’t nor­mally order chick­en at a res­taur­ant because I find oth­er pro­teins more inter­est­ing, but Hum­ming­bird’s was very nicely done, a breast roas­ted with lem­on and sage (accord­ing to the menu, although it seemed more pan-fried to me). The duck, from the entree part of the menu but really big enough for a din­ner if you had sides as well, was served with len­tils and Valrhona chocol­ate, and had us in rap­tures. The fish of the day, served with clams, was Snap­per, seared skin on, and was also amaz­ing. But I think my favour­ite part was the roast pota­toes we were served on the side. They were peeled and turned beau­ti­fully, and there was just some­thing magic­al about them – they kind of reminded me of going to some res­taur­ant as a child – per­haps even a Cobb & Co type place, and encoun­ter­ing deep-fried roast pota­toes for the first time. I know that does­n’t sound like a com­pli­ment, but it abso­lutely is.

We were all very well sat­is­fied and full, so it was just as well that we only had three desserts to share between us.  The creme catalana was nice, but the salted car­a­mel sauce that came with the chocol­ate pud­ding had us fight­ing over who would lick the plate. Salted car­a­mel’s pretty trendy right now, but few places make it actu­ally salty enough to really wow the pal­ate – Hum­ming­bird’s was spot on. And then there was the Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla – three dif­fer­ent tastes on one plate. The lem­on and vanilla curd was some­thing I would hap­pily eat on toast for break­fast every single day, the goat’s cheese cheese­cake was utterly sub­lime, and hap­pily, the vanilla pan­acotta obli­gingly trembled just like a woman’s breast, the way a good pan­acotta should. We may have had a little bit of wine when we decided it needed to be cap­tured for pos­ter­ity:

So that’s a 1200 word tour through a menu. I enjoyed every minute of it. Laura was like “oh god, we have to find fault with some­thing or we’re not being good crit­ics!”. All we could come up with is wish­ing our water had been topped up a little more, and that there’d been a sauce spoon with the oysters. We ate as the guests of Hum­ming­bird, but will def­in­itely be going back on our own dimes. As soon as pos­sible.

* I hate the idea of imply­ing women are pred­at­ors, but I do know people who choose to identi­fy them­selves as cou­gars. And I gen­er­ally dis­like them. So we’ll run with this for now.