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.