lights and beerWhen the amaz­ing peo­ple behind Welling­ton on a Plate offer you tick­ets at the last minute to the very pop­u­lar and sold out col­lab­o­ra­tion between La Boca Loca and Par­rot Dog  Brew­ery, you might be sur­prised at how hard it is to find some­one to go along with you, because appar­ent­ly there is a plague in town, but then you might remem­ber that your poor pub­lic ser­vant father is hav­ing a shit of a time late­ly and deserves a spe­cial treat, so all is well.

Wellington’s Par­rot­Dog Brew­ery plays host to a deli­cious evening in part­ner­ship with Miramar’s La Boca Loca Restau­rant.

They are serv­ing up sev­er­al hot and fresh Mex­i­can dish­es, pre­pared on-site at the brew­ery amongst the shiny stain­less steel tanks. Each dish will be matched with its own flavour­some craft beer.

There will even be some Mex­i­can music cour­tesy of DJ Chefi­to and local beer with local­ly made Mex­i­can cui­sine: Vamos!

This would have been a gor­geous event to be at in sum­mer, with lit­tle stalls set up for each food & beer pair­ing, and keg tables set up to rest your glass­es on. The bunting and the light­ing was love­ly (though not suit­able for tak­ing pho­tos with your phone), but with con­crete floors and big stain­less steel tanks, even with the num­ber of peo­ple around, we were all wear­ing our coats. Me being me, when Will took the micro­phone and told us there were five things to taste and we could have two each (at least), I won­dered if that would be enough to eat, but I had for­got­ten the fill­ing pow­er of beer!

ceviche and beerSo, on entry we were each giv­en a taster of a spe­cial­ly brewed beer made with a Mex­i­can herb that is as yet unnamed (the beer, that is, the herb has a name which I have very use­ful­ly for­got­ten EDIT: but now they’ve told me on Twit­ter, I can tell you it’s Epaozte), then each of the five dish­es were matched with anoth­er beer. Steak & mush­rooms served on thick polen­ta-ish pan­cakes was served with a Bit­ter Bitch IPA, wild boar was shred­ded and matched to a Dead Canary Pale Ale, dessert which was like a deep-fried crunchy whoop­ie pie came with a Dogg dark Ale, and the Blood­hound red IPA came with a slight­ly odd but still deli­cious Kina soup, done in a chili sauce with a spe­cial kind of corn. That one def­i­nite­ly left a spicy tin­gle. My favourite beer and food though was the but­ter­fish ceviche topped with crunchy grasshop­per salt (actu­al­ly made from grasshop­pers), served with the Flax­en Feath­er  blonde ale. The grasshop­pers were real­ly tasty. My dad got tip­sy and request­ed Mex­i­can songs from the gui­tar player/singer, who oblig­ed, the brew­ers and the chefs float­ed around answer­ing ques­tions,  and all togeth­er it was a super pleas­ant evening. I’m pleased the ladies got to use the inside toi­let while men were rel­e­gat­ed to the por­taloos out­side in the wind.

What sur­prised me though was that there was also a beer & food event at Garage Project tonight as part of Welling­ton on a Plate (where they were keep­ing all the beards nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with craft beer) which sure­ly would have made it a bit of a Sophie’s Choice for hop heads — except that the Garage Project do was with Mon­soon Poon, and you know how we feel about that.

But while we’re on that sub­ject, last week, we were at the Local­ist Jam at the City Gallery, and in between bacon donuts, we were aston­ished to hear Mike Egan from Mon­soon Poon and also head of the hos­pi­tal­i­ty asso­ci­a­tion (EDIT) Restau­rant Asso­ci­a­tion say there is no Mex­i­can restau­rant scene in Welling­ton. That would prob­a­bly come as a bit of a shock to La Boca Loca. And Viva Mex­i­co. And Caliente. And Tequi­la Joe’s (even if that’s Tex-Mex). And Sweet Moth­er’s Kitchen.  And Hot Like a Mex­i­can. Per­haps what he meant was he has yet to open an expen­sive­ly designed venue to serve a  bas­tardised ver­sion of the cui­sine at inflat­ed prices to cater to the Chur­ton Park crowd? But there’s already a Fly­ing Bur­ri­to Broth­ers, so we’re mys­ti­fied…