I’ve nev­er been afraid of eclecticism. A dash of Kiwiana and a touch of faded grandeur can go down a treat if served with a gen­er­ous slug of hip­ster irony (see Mighty Mighty). A grab-bag of Nana kitsch can turn into some­thing resem­bling con­cep­tu­al art if it’s assembled with wit and flair (see Auck­land’s North­ern Steam­ship Com­pany). But some­times it all goes hor­ribly wrong.

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I know! Let’s grab some swatches of loud old car­pet and put them in gold frames along the bar! Ooh, let’s get some ran­dom bal­us­trades and stand­ard lamps to mix in with the leftover expens­ive design­er chairs from the last place! Hmm, needs more cross-stitch to go with the weather­beaten weather­boards and sev­en pat­terns of wall­pa­per. Flor­al-painted female tor­sos will add some artsy class above the urin­als. But it needs to be bloki­er, so let’s add dozens of TV screens to show our branded Flash anim­a­tions when the footie’s not on, and the piece de res­ist­ance: a map of New Zild made out of Tui caps. Maaaate! [Read more]

Of course, the menu matches the decor, find­ing new and dizzy­ing ways to match Asi­an, Itali­an, Cajun and even Irish ingredi­ents in com­bin­a­tions that would test even an inver­teb­rate’s stom­ach. On the oth­er hand, the wine list is short and pre­dict­able, no doubt churned out by a cor­por­ate strategy, and the beer selec­tion is sim­il­arly unin­spir­ing.

A hand­ful of the above ideas, either evolving organ­ic­ally as he expres­sion of an eccent­ric indi­vidu­al­ist’s per­son­al­ity or com­posed with deft humour by a tal­en­ted design­er, could have worked a treat. But when it’s all com­bined into a slick and con­sciously con­trived “wack­i­ness” with the sheen of an nas­cent fran­chise ready to spread from Queen­stown to the Hutt, it’s enough to make the dirti­est of flies long for the clin­ic­al per­fec­tion of min­im­al­ism.