WOP: Eating the other cheek

Miss Hungry & Frozen said the oth­er day “I think cheeks are the new shanks”. Read­ing vari­ous Dine menus for Wel­ling­ton on Plate, they are indeed every­where. You won’t hear a com­plaint about that from me. Instead, you get to read about how I had beef cheeks for lunch and then din­ner on Thursday.

Atlanta

The Ter­race is not nor­mally a place I would vis­it for the primary pur­pose of eat­ing, but as I had an appoint­ment there and then some time to kill, I saw a Wel­ling­ton on a Plate sign out, so I looked up what Atlanta were offer­ing, and decided that I wanted to go to there. It was 11.30am at the time, so the lovely wait­ress said the kit­chen would­n’t be ready for about anoth­er 15 minutes. That was fine with me, so she brought me a paper and my glass of Julich­er Sav Blanc. I chose the tomato, bean and cho­ri­zo soup, which was accom­pan­ied by some of the nicest bread I’ve had in ages. They’d lose a couple of style points for the but­ter being in one of those little packs, except I sup­pose it makes sense for a cafe that does a roar­ing trade in takeout cof­fee and muffins. The soup itself had a bit of spice to it, and was a nice thing to eat on a cold day. Then it was time for the beef cheeks. They came out in a shim­mer­ing pool of gravy, with what called itself four-cheese polenta cake. The cheeks were lovely. Cooked for 24 hours, they fell to shreds with the poke of a spoon. Rich, gelat­in­ous and deli­cious, com­fort food at its best. The polenta, mean­while, was strangely taste­less, the only cheese notice­able was that melted on top, which was like a super­mar­ket edam. Luck­ily, the gravy was so fla­vour­some.  At $25, it was a very good meal, with lovely ser­vice. If you’re near the Ter­race and look­ing to get warmed up from the inside, I’d recom­mend this meal.

Bettys [sic]

I’m glad I was smart enough to book for Bettys, as the Cock­tail Canape Crawl was in that night as well. Bettys is pre­dom­in­antly a bar, but they do great food as well, out of the Hum­ming­bird kit­chen. The only menu they were offer­ing was the Wel­ling­ton on a Plate selec­tion, but as long as you’re a car­ni­vore, you’re going to be well happy. Our beef cheek ravi­oli took an awfully long time to arrive, but our wait­ress was really apo­lo­get­ic, and we had the ever­chan­ging video walls to watch, and deli­cious Mar­tin­bor­ough Vine­yard Pinot Noir to sip, so we did okay. The ravi­oli was served as a single piece, ooz­ing out the chest­nut pur­ee. The Angus beef cheek filling was tasty, but not par­tic­u­larly cheeky – it could have been any kind of slow­cooked beef in that form, really.

But the main course, oh my god oh my god oh my god! Again, it took ages to come out – appar­ently the Hum­ming­bird kit­chen was slammed, but oh wow, it was worth the wait for our Tararua Ranges wild ven­ison pie with parsnip purée and braised red cab­bage. The pastry was flakey and crunchy and melty all at once, and did­n’t go soggy when you poured (prob­ably unne­ces­sary) extra gravy over it. The ven­ison was full of rich gamey fla­vour, and was abso­lutely tender and just amaz­ing. The parsnip pur­ee and braised red cab­bage were per­fect accom­pani­ments, and it all went won­der­fully with the wine match. Every mouth­ful was bliss. I am drool­ing now just writ­ing about it. This pie will be on my mind for a long time, I can tell you.

We also ordered dessert for an extra $10, chocol­ate tart with lovely cher­ries, which arrived quickly. The dark chocol­ate tart was a little salty as an extra treat, and served with sweetened cream since it was quite bit­ter­sweet. Again, deli­cious, one of the best chocol­ate tarts I’ve had. It would have been great with the wine, if I’d had any of my gen­er­ous pour left. So so good, I can­not recom­mend this meal enough. Get there ASAP because there aren’t a lot of tables, and Bettys is only open from Wed­nes­day-Sunday. Just be aware that because it is mostly a bar, it’s fairly loud so not ideal for those who are hard of hear­ing. And because it’s dark, it’s not best for food blog­gers want­ing to take good pho­tos either! I’ll be going back for their reg­u­lar menu as soon as pos­sible – and also to claim my free cock­tail that the waiter prom­ised me because they could­n’t find their Visa Wel­ling­ton on a Plate scratch & win cards that I should have been entitled to for pay­ing with my cred­it card.