2AWA: Hottest Hospo of the Year

We had a rather heated debate over the Wel­ling­tonista email list over the inclu­sion of this cat­egory in the awards, with one per­son think­ing it was derog­at­ory and insult­ing. That per­son got told quite sternly to “READ THE WIKI ALREADY!” so they could dis­cov­er that the hos­pit­al­ity people we were pay­ing trib­ute to weren’t being objec­ti­fied merely for their looks, but also for the qual­ity of ser­vice that they provide and the way that they con­trib­ute to the over­all exper­i­ence of a place. And that’s not objec­ti­fy­ing at all, hon­est…

Can I have a pint…and your phone num­ber, thanks:
Hot­ties (or rather: ‘tal­en­ted good people’) are after the jump…

Enzo from Scopa

Every­one in Wel­ling­ton is aware of how hot Enzo is – includ­ing him­self, no doubt, but that does­n’t detract from his appeal. He’s easy on the eye, pas­sion­ate about good food and good ser­vice, remem­bers his reg­u­lars and gladhands lucky cus­tom­ers. One of these days he’s going to make someone a bloody good husband/Civil Uni­on Part­ner (with those fam­ily ties, he can no doubt cook, make cof­fee and mix a good cock­tail) and there are plenty of Wel­ling­tonis­tas who’d gladly line up for that priv­iledge.

B. Keyz from Southern Cross Electric Quiz

There’s a reas­on that the Wel­ling­tonista put up with the ter­rible ser­vice, chipped glasses and mediocre food at the South­ern Cross to go to their quiz night every Tues­day, and it’s not just because we keep win­ning bar tabs. Quiz­mas­ter Keyz is always sharply dressed, sharp-tongued and sharp-wit­ted. He lets us argue with him about the right answers, laughs at our jokes and has­n’t yet thrown us out for inap­pro­pri­ate com­ments writ­ten on our answer sheets. He’s not only the mas­ter of the quiz, he’s also the mas­ter of our squeally girly crushes.

WINNER!!!
C. The staff at Mighty Mighty

The thing about Mighty Mighty is that it’s hard to pick just one per­son as the hot­test staff mem­ber. In fact, it’s been debated vig­or­ously all over the toi­let walls in the Ladies’, but so far there is no clear win­ner. All of them go that extra mile with a smile when serving you their tasty cheap wine, or painstak­ingly hand-crank­ing the ice crush­ing machine for your cock­tails. There’s the Sallys – both the red­head and the mag­ni­fic­antly tat­tooed, the Jap-froed Kohei, and the Baby Hitler-faced Matt so there’s bound to be someone to suit all tastes.

D. Jonny at Hawthorn

A beau­ti­ful man in a waist­coat with a boun­ti­ful sup­ply of liquor at his hands, who remem­bers your drink pref­er­ences and offers you tastes of things in a sim­il­ar vein to chal­lenge your senses. Need we say more?

E. Nicola at Wineseeker

After a red wine to drink with fish’n chips? Ask Nic­ola. Want a riesling for less than $20 that tastes like it’s from Waipara but is actu­ally some­thing dif­fer­ent? Ask Nic­ola. In all mat­ters to do with wine, she always knows exactly what we want, when we want it, and why. And if single Wel­ling­tonis­tas meet hot people at the upcom­ing Speed-Wine-tast­ing, we just might have to name our chil­dren after her…

F. Jesse at the Maranui Surf Cafe

Giv­en how insanely busy they are, it’s a wise decision on the part of the Maranui Surf Cafe to gen­er­ally keep the mous­ta­chioed Jesse behind the counter. If he was out and cir­cu­lat­ing amongst the tables, cus­tom­ers would sit for hours order­ing more and more as the queues got longer and longer. Instead, they rush to get to the cash register to pay, so they can be smiled at, and have their orders praised (“Chocol­ate AND straw­berry milk­shake? Geni­us!”). Every­one likes to be made to feel like they’re smart, espe­cially when the com­pli­menter is so damn cute. It makes the hangover that much easi­er to deal with.

Stalk all these staff using the “hot­test hospo” tag on Zoom­in.