WOAP overload: a plum and a duke

I love Welling­ton on a Plate, espe­cial­ly when I ignore my bank bal­ance and focus on tick­ing off as many lines as pos­si­ble on my spread­sheet.  I’ve got a cou­ple more places to review still, but in the inter­ests of actu­al­ly get­ting to sleep tonight, I’ll just give you two — Plum and Duke Carvel­l’s. If you’re look­ing for the tl:dr, I’d say go to Duke’s. Oth­er­wise, read on…

1. Plum

I’ve had the odd cof­fee or drink at Plum in the past, but I can’t think of when I’ve actu­al­ly sat down and had a meal there, so I head­ed along one lunchtime, lured in by the sticky pork bel­ly offered up by their $35 dine menu. The halou­mi starter was nice enough, the bal­sam­ic glaze being a high­light, but it was a small­er por­tion than this pic­ture will sug­gest:

The pork bel­ly was also a small por­tion, and while it was tasty, I wish it had been crisper on the top and less dry in the mid­dle.

My favourite bit of the meal was the John­er Estate Moon­light Pinot Noir because John­er are very good peo­ple. Ser­vice was friend­ly and I was in and out in under 45 min­utes, which is great for lunch. I do wish I’d ordered the burg­er instead though, because the ones at the table next to me smelled amaz­ing, and Jere­my Tay­lor enjoyed his so much.

2. Duke Carvell’s

Duke’s was my first week­end expe­ri­ence of a Welling­ton on a Plate menu, which was lucky because it was a meal that took a long time to eat. The Jerusalem arti­choke (a root veg­etable, not relat­ed to the spiky thing you may be think­ing of — the ever-accom­mo­dat­ing Enzo even went to the kitchen to fetch one to show my com­pan­ion) soup was deli­cious — not quite Ti Kou­ka soup of dreams, but def­i­nite­ly some­thing I want to eat more of. Although it was rather plain­ly pre­sent­ed and I had to ask for but­ter for the bread (which was real­ly real­ly good but­ter , but was real­ly hard to spread. Swings and round­abouts).

It was a good fill­ing por­tion, so if you’re veg­e­tar­i­an, you could have the soup and the dessert and be hap­py. But I went for the main instead, Wairara­pa lamb neck fil­let tagine with prunes, Lot Eight olives and Grey­town Gold saf­fron rice.

It came out very very hot, per­fect for a cold day. The lamb was cooked to melt in the mouth, and sprigs of corian­der were a good coun­ter­bal­ance to how sweet the prunes made the tagine. The rice need­ed a lot more salt in my opin­ion, but per­haps that’s just because I have a very salty palate. I’d sug­gest actu­al­ly that the soup and the tagine togeth­er might be more fill­ing than some peo­ple may care for at lunchtime, but you will know your own appetite bet­ter than me. Oh, and there was only chardon­nay on offer, not the Croft Pinot Noir list­ed that would have been bet­ter with the tagine, but still, I enjoyed my meal thor­ough­ly.