More WOAP: the bland, the sublime and the curious

As I said before, I’m work­ing my way around the lunchtime Dine menus of places near my work. Here’s what I’ve got to report.

1. Vivant
2. Lit­tle Beer Quar­ter
3. Ti Kou­ka Cafe
4. Finc

1. Vivant 

The social club at work select­ed Vivant, prob­a­bly because they offered a meal for only $15 (no wine includ­ed). It was just okay. We’d all ordered in advance and and some­one super organ­ised direct­ed the wait­ers with our food so we were served pret­ty quick­ly, but no one came by to see if we want­ed to order drinks. I had the “Fresh toma­to, feta and basil bruschet­ta with Oli­vo olive oil” because I did­n’t know what the soup of the day would be (very aver­age-look­ing toma­to soup, appar­ent­ly, although I’m not sure if we were told that). Of course it’s the mid­dle of win­ter so the toma­to was pret­ty taste­less and the feta very sparse. It was two very miser­ly pieces too. The Park­vale mush­room and pea risot­to with Kapi­ti Pamaro New Zealand parme­san and mizu­na leaves was bet­ter, with the mizu­na leaves def­i­nite­ly mak­ing the flavour more inter­est­ing (though to be hon­est I thought they were rock­et), but it was very much the sort of default veg­e­tar­i­an option, y’know? If your social club takes you to Vivant, the steak sand­wich looks to be a bet­ter option, assum­ing you eat meat (I fig­ured I’d be eat­ing enough burg­ers that I did­n’t want to go that option). For $15 it was an okay lunch, but real­ly, there are so many more inter­est­ing places to eat in Welling­ton, why set­tle for bland?

2. Little Beer Quarter

A veg­e­tar­i­an friend chose LBQ off the list of places I want­ed to go to, because she was excit­ed there were vege options, while I was excit­ed to choose between veni­son or hare. We met there at lunchtime in Wednes­day, showed our­selves to a table in the half-full place because the staff did­n’t deign to pay us any atten­tion, and then my friend went up to the counter to ask for some menus. Appar­ent­ly if you want to eat the Welling­ton on a Plate menu, you absolute­ly need a reser­va­tion. Since we had­n’t been expect­ing that at all, we left. I’ve had noth­ing but shit ser­vice at LBQ (wait­ing near­ly an hour for entrees at lunchtime in an emp­ty pub, then hav­ing your mains arrive at the same time stands out in par­tic­u­lar) so I won’t be going back.

3. Ti Kouka Cafe

Instead my veg­e­tar­i­an friend and I went to Ti Kou­ka which I had planned to go to with anoth­er friend the next day. They were very busy, but we were able to perch at the high tables at the front and were moved to a booth when one opened up. The very friend­ly staff let us know the kitchen was very busy and made sure we weren’t pressed for time — an awe­some thing to do espe­cial­ly at lunchtime. They also let us know (unprompt­ed) that if we were veg­e­tar­i­an, it was pos­si­ble to get pas­ta from the reg­u­lar menu as part of the Dine deal — love­ly. The only try­ing part of the expe­ri­ence was being forced to choose only two cours­es. My friend was get­ting the halou­mi so I decid­ed to go for “Kapi­ti cau­li­flower and parsnip soup with lamb, Hin­au lemon olive oil and Zany Zeus greek yoghurt”. I’m pret­ty sure it was one of the best bowls of soup I have ever eat­en, ever.

The soup itself was as smooth as vel­vet, full of flavour that was zinged up with the olive oil, and the rich greek yoghurt. The pieces of lamb shoul­der had obvi­ous­ly been slow-cooked, and were just fat­ty enough to real­ly rep­re­sent the rich deli­cious­ness  that lamb should have. Oh my god, I could have eat­en bowls and bowls and bowls of this soup. I will prob­a­bly dream about it, and pos­si­bly involve it in my sex­u­al fan­tasies. Maybe.

A dish like that is hard to fol­low, but the Wairara­pa free range pork sausage with con­fit duck, braised whero peas and Grey­town Gold saf­fron aioli gave it a damn good go (Actu­al­ly, on the print­ed menu it said Island Bay sausage, but I’m going off the web­site here).

I guess you could call this a sort of cas­soulet. It was incred­i­bly rich, with con­fit duck and sausage both unc­tu­at­ing all over the place. You prob­a­bly might not want to have this with the soup, actu­al­ly, unless you have a Cre­osotesque palate, although the Mebus mer­lot did cut the fat well. I did­n’t snap pic­tures of my friend’s food, but it was deli­cious too, let me assure you. And despite their busi­ness, and how I lin­gered over every mouth­ful of that soup, I was in and out in an hour. $35 def­i­nite­ly well worth it. Go back in time and don’t both­er read­ing this review, just head to Ti Kou­ka straight away.

4. Finc

The food at Finc was very nice, but I think they are tak­ing advan­tage of Welling­ton on a Plate cus­tomers. I decid­ed to get the dine menu for $35. A more finan­cial­ly restrained friend decid­ed to order cab­i­net food. Fol­low along with me. 

I don’t like peas or ham in their stan­dard forms, but I did like the “Creamy pota­to, smoky ham hock and green pea soup with Zany Zeus organ­ic crème fraîche”. The water­cress (or pea shoots?) added some fresh­ness, the chunks of ham were smokey­good­ness and I got­ta get my ass to the Zany Zeus shop real soon cos their stuff is deli­cious. It was a good soup, but it was­n’t great. Things like the but­ter for the bread being too hard to spread actu­al­ly make quite a dif­fer­ence. And then I had a pie.

It was a deli­cious pie, although to be hon­est it could have been beef instead of veni­son, the choco­late taste was pret­ty strong. But the pas­try was great, the meat ten­der, all the good things. My friend on the bud­get also ordered a pie from the cab­i­net, and paid $10 for it. It came on a plate ringed with a driz­zle of nice olive oil. So if we say that the soup was worth $10, the glass of wine anoth­er $10, the car­rot gar­nish on my plate cost $5? Hmmm. And the Welly on a Plate burg­er they’re offer­ing sounds EXACTLY the same as the one that’s on their menu reg­u­lar­ly, except it costs $25 instead of $21. I see Welling­ton on a Plate as a way to get excep­tion­al val­ue as a way of get­ting more peo­ple to try more restau­rants. Finc, it seems, sees it as a way to jack up prices. Go to Ti Kou­ka twice instead.