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.