At the Welling­ton­ista, we don’t often give props to less con­scious­ly hip­ster places like One Red Dog, even though their con­tin­ued suc­cess shows they have a devot­ed fol­low­ing. Today we dis­cov­ered one of the rea­sons why this devot­ed fol­low­ing might exist.

Our lit­tle fam­i­ly-of-four had emerged from the Kids Ani­ma­tion ses­sion at the Para­mount very hun­gry. Where, among the zil­lions of Courte­nay Place eater­ies, could we take the girls for lunch?

There actu­al­ly weren’t that many open, and those that were did­n’t real­ly appeal, or weren’t in The Book. Final­ly, and only just before the girls’ hunger got the bet­ter of their man­ners, we slipped into One Red Dog in Blair Street.

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It was qui­et inside, with a hand­ful of oth­er fam­i­ly-type pun­ters already seat­ed. With­out delay we were shown to a com­fort­able booth and hand­ed our menus and a glass of water each. The girls were giv­en crayons to colour in their menus; and their result­ing qui­et indus­tri­ous­ness lead to such an increase in the gen­er­al lev­el of our parental san­i­ty that we felt com­fort­able enough to order a glass of wine each.

The chil­drens’ menu was one of the best we’ve yet seen, pri­mar­i­ly piz­zas and pas­ta and thank­ful­ly devoid of any trace of that sta­ple of the lazy restau­ran­teur, chick­en nuggets. The elder chose her own piz­za, a ham cheese and pineap­ple vari­ant; while the younger chose a bowl of ham cheese and toma­to pas­ta. We chose a chick­en sal­ad and lamb sal­ad for our­selves.

We did­n’t have to wait too long for the food to arrive. And, in anoth­er nice touch, the girls’ food was­n’t too hot to eat! Yes, there’s noth­ing worse, from the per­spec­tive of a four-year-old, to wait through an inter­minable hell of deli­cious food smells, the sight of oth­er peo­ple eat­ing, and your own emp­ty stom­ach, only to find that your food, when it arrives, burns your mouth. This has been the cause of a num­ber of unfor­tu­nate and embar­rass­ing scenes over the years, and we par­ents were grate­ful to be spared anoth­er such.

Both girls enjoyed their selec­tions enor­mous­ly, with the elder fin­ish­ing off the younger’s por­tion. Our own sal­ads were deli­cious, and would not have dis­graced many of the fanci­er cafes around town. In all, we were very hap­py with the food, and would go there again. Oth­ers may argue that One Red Dog’s piz­zas per­haps aren’t the finest in Welling­ton (Boulot, Sco­pa, and even my nos­tal­gic favourite Cal­zone do bet­ter) but as we saw, piz­za is not the only string to the Dog’s bow, and in any case the over­all expe­ri­ence was sev­er­al streets apart from the usu­al dreck that char­ac­teris­es the unfor­tu­nate ghet­to of “fam­i­ly din­ing”.

So there you have it. For a qui­et, fast, sane, and rea­son­ably priced (take 30% off with your Enter­tain­ment Book) lunch with kids (and prob­a­bly your eth­nic-food-pho­bic old­er rel­a­tives) give One Red Dog a whirl.