What to do when one’s par­ents come to town and want to take you out to din­ner? We usu­al­ly quiz our fel­low Welling­ton­istæ around the office water­cool­er: there’s always an opin­ion or three on a sub­ject like this.

Giv­en we had to cope with a not ter­ri­bly adven­tur­ous (in the culi­nary sense) old­er bloke, and two small kids, where could we go that was classy yet sat­is­fy our vary­ing require­ments? There were many good sug­ges­tions:

  • Zibib­bo — classy, plus PIZZA for small peo­ple;
  • Roxy — qui­et, tasty;
  • Joe’s Garage — new­ly opened chain restau­rant in Tory Street;
  • Portofi­no — anoth­er new­ly opened chain restau­rant, in the Merid­i­an build­ing;
  • Le Met­ro­pol­i­taine — French, and known for a good steak;
  • Oste­ria del Toro — Mediter­ranean for every­one;
  • Crazy Horse — for a meat fren­zy;
  • Gus­to Bistro — Petone’s finest;
  • the Lido — an old stand­by, great food for the price.

The real PortofinoSo in the end we went to Portofi­no (the real Portofi­no in Lig­uria is pic­tured — thanks Pen­dolino — not the restau­rant, sad­ly). 

The loca­tion is good if you work in the suity part of town — it’s by the water­front look­ing out past the north end of the Queen’s Wharf T, and you can watch the fer­ries and tugs on the water.

We were also pleased with the ser­vice (and per­haps when the staff are most­ly Ital­ian, bring­ing two small kids along seems to help). The kitchen was open to view, so we took the kids over to have a look and the head chef came and had a chat to them. Love­ly.

How­ev­er the food was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. While we were all rea­son­ably hap­py with our selec­tions, there seemed to be some­thing miss­ing in the menu. It was good but not great, sol­id but not inspir­ing, and was some­what over­priced for what could have been a menu from any estab­lish­ment on Lygon Street (and just like Lygon Street, the maître d’ was out snag­ging just about any­one who hap­pened to wan­der by).

So in sum­ma­ry: Portofi­no is nice enough, and is a safe pair of hands for upscale fam­i­ly din­ing. But in Welling­ton that’s prob­a­bly not enough, and we think you can do bet­ter for the price.