If you’re going to splash out a large amount of money for a din­ner for a spe­cial occa­sion or because you’re worth it, the whole exper­i­ence had bet­ter be pretty damn spec­tac­u­lar. The food must be deli­cious, the ser­vice must be amaz­ing, and the atmo­sphere should be grand. The fol­low­ing res­taur­ants can all deliv­er sub­lime times, but which one is very best of all?

I spent all my rent money on din­ner here, but at least when the bailiffs beat me to death I will die bliss­fully:

Splurges after the jump…

A. Martin Bosley’s

The best fine-din­ing res­taur­ant in the coun­try, accord­ing to Cuisine, and it’s hard to argue. If you’re after some­thing approach­ing the molecu­lar gast­ro­nomy of Fer­ran Adria or Heston Blu­menth­al (all foams, dusts and porcini/chocolate com­bin­a­tions) then this might be the closest you’ll get in Wel­ling­ton. It helps to like sea­food, but you can always blow $80 on Wagyu beef if you’re that way inclined.%

B. Trade Kitchen

trade
A thor­oughly impress­ive debut in a brand-new site far from the tra­di­tion­al din­ing and night­life areas. Their spark­ling mod­ern decor (giant Tom Dix­on lights and Richard Killeen graph­ics) is a nice depar­ture from tra­di­tion, and their will­ing­ness to mix dif­fer­ent cuts of meat in a single dish (such as beef fil­let with ox cheek tart and mar­row beignet) speaks of an abil­ity to mix subtle innov­a­tion with immacu­late tech­nique, at an impress­ive price.

WINNER!!!
C. Matterhorn

Not really “faine dain­ing” in the tra­di­tion­al sense, but damned close and often with an invig­or­at­ingly ori­gin­al approach to ingredi­ents. World-class chefs such as Rex Mor­gan and Nick Huff­man have left their marks on the menu, and former sig­na­ture dishes such as mut­ton­bird and pikopiko risotto and truffled cham­pagne and potato soup are remembered with fond­ness. Week­ends are rauc­ous, and more suited to snack­ing on bowls while knock­ing back the cock­tails, but come for din­ner mid-week and you’ll exper­i­ence a top-end din­ing exper­i­ence without the top-end price.

D. Citron

A won­der­fully intim­ate set­ting for dec­ad­ent and deli­cious meals. Splash out, go for the degust­a­tion menu, let the know­ledge­able and charm­ing som­meliers choose your wine, and get set for an unfor­get­table jour­ney into cuisine.

E: Capitol

Cap­it­ol is a small res­taur­ant, and its kit­chen is so fam­ously tiny it’s fre­quently com­pared to a ship’s gal­ley, and yet some­how they man­age to turn out the most deli­cious food. We think that their secret is by using the best ingre­di­ants and keep­ing things really simple, but we haven’t man­aged to fig­ure out how they man­age to keep their bath­rooms smelling so deli­cious (exactly, when’s the last time you actu­ally looked for­ward to smelling a bath­room?). Cap­it­ol’s staff have mastered the art of friendly but smoothly pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice (just ask Gan­dalf), and as well as an extens­ive range of apperetiffs and digest­ives, their small wine list offers some really lovely choices. If you ever get the chance to attend a Wine­maker­’s Night, where they match a set menu with wines from a par­tic­u­lar vine­yard, you should rush at it (Four exquis­ite courses matched with Seris­en wines for $85? Hell yes!).

To spend some ser­i­ous cash at these places, look for them on Zoom­in under “bes­tuncheap”.