Reasons to be cheerful

Welling­ton may be in the eco­nom­ic dol­drums, with some promi­nent recent clo­sures in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor (some lament­ed, such as La Met­ro­pol­i­tain; oth­ers less so, such as The Big Kumara), but plen­ty of new places are open­ing too. Yes­ter­day I slob­bered all over Big Bad Wolf, but here’s a quick sum­ma­ry of some oth­er open­ings.

Dad­dy O’s may have a cursed loca­tion (the for­mer Harem/Voodoo) and a sil­ly name, but it has a lot going for it. This din­er and swing venue (just the dance, unfor­tu­nate­ly) gen­er­al­ly avoids an Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti nos­tal­gia-fest, and the menu has some inter­est­ing items along with the usu­al burg­ers, steaks and piz­zas. The pulled duck is ridicu­lous­ly suc­cu­lent, and hash browns get a kick with caramelised onions and smoked papri­ka. There’s some con­fu­sion about whether they’ll be BYO on cer­tain week­nights, but the craft beer selec­tion is impres­sive, and their milk­shakes are superb: alco­holic Tiramisu milk­shake, any­one?

We Welling­ton­istas have been han­ker­ing after a 24-hour din­er for a while, but unfor­tu­nate­ly nei­ther Dad­dy O’s nor Drex­els aim for the late-late crowd. The lat­ter is a Christchurch insti­tu­tion that intro­duced a bewil­dered pop­u­la­tion to the rad­i­cal idea of going out for break­fast, and the new Welling­ton branch keeps the break­fast focus by clos­ing at 2pm. By all accounts it’s an effi­cient pan­cake-deliv­ery sys­tem, and while it will nev­er fill the spe­cial place in my liv­er that was Rum­ble’s, it seems to suit the War­ing Tay­lor St loca­tion.

The water­front has seen the replace­ment of a few strug­gling ven­tures with new busi­ness­es. Chalk and East Square recent­ly took over a cou­ple of trou­ble­some Chaf­fers Dock ten­an­cies. The for­mer seems to be try­ing to bring a touch of Te Aro cof­fee-geek­ery to the har­bour, but while the food and cof­fee are def­i­nite­ly pleas­ant, it does­n’t yet exhib­it much of a point of dif­fer­ence (apart from the view). East Square mix­es a vari­ety of South­east Asian cuisines at a mod­er­ate price point, which could be a refresh­ing change among water­front eater­ies, but I’m yet to hear any reports on its qual­i­ty.

The long-stand­ing Lat­i­tude 41 at Queens Wharf has been replaced by Bin 44, which moves towards being more of a bar than a café. The decor is clean and com­fort­able but a lit­tle gener­ic, and the menu is gen­er­al­ly famil­iar upmar­ket pub grub, albeit with some nice touch­es (three cheese top­ping on their burg­ers? You had me at “cheese”). It’s great to see anoth­er new place with a good selec­tion of craft beer, but the cock­tail list ought to be report­ed to the Mar­ti­ni Police for crimes against lan­guage and mixol­o­gy: the “Wom­an­iz­er Mar­ti­ni”, made of bub­bles, vanil­la vod­ka and OJ? That’s all kinds of wrong.

Muse on Allen slipped in fair­ly qui­et­ly, replac­ing Satay Kam­pong with some­thing decid­ed­ly more upmar­ket. I haven’t been, but the menu looks deli­cious, if not entire­ly ground­break­ing. If any­one’s tried dish­es such as Sous-vide beef fil­let with cashew purée and duck liv­er mousse, or Pork shoul­der with con­fit pota­to and black pud­ding, we’d love to know what it’s like.

At the oth­er end of the price spec­trum, the new wavy-veran­da­hed restau­rant clus­ter on Tory St is grad­u­al­ly fill­ing up. Sin­ga­pu­ra and Thai on Tory both seem like very basic exam­ples of their types, though it’s worth not­ing that the lat­ter has some extra-cheap prices while they await their liquor license. Although the adja­cent fish & chips shop is not quite open (at the time of writ­ing), their deliv­ery option sounds like some­thing to antic­i­pate, and it’s part of a neo-chip­pie trend that includes a slight revamp to the strug­gling SoHo café on Tarana­ki St.

While nei­ther Sin­ga­pu­ra nor Thai on Tory seem like­ly to excite the jad­ed palate of David Bur­ton, the new Tiger restau­rant and karaoke bar (not online, as far as I know) around the cor­ner in Hol­land St might do the trick. Adven­tur­ous din­ers (from a Euro­cen­tric per­spec­tive, at least) might want to try dish­es such as Tea-scent­ed chick­en gris­tle, Beaf heart and tripe in chilli sauce or Stir-fried chopped entrails of sheep. Oth­ers might stick with orange beef and get­ting stuck into the soju before singing Eight­ies pow­er bal­lads at inad­vis­able vol­umes. You know who you are.

Intrigu­ing Asian treats are also in store at I Adore, the tiny shop with the huge mul­ti-coloured sign in Ghuznee St. Among the colour­ful sweets, ice-cream sprin­kles and teas, there are bins of dried fish and chick­en feet to tempt or appal. In near­by Cuba St the lat­est addi­tions are a bit more con­ven­tion­al­ly West­ern. Ka Pai sig­nals the expan­sion of local chains into Cuba Mall, to be con­tin­ued when Whol­ly Bagels opens in the old Chica­go menswear shop. Lul­la­by of Bird­land, a cou­ple of blocks up near Vivian St, achieves some sort of Cuba St bin­go: White­washed exposed brick! Cup­cakes! Vin­tage streetwear! Cof­fee! Six Bar­rel Soda and Fox­ton Fizz!

Last but def­i­nite­ly not least, because it does­n’t need our help to be a rag­ing suc­cess, is Flight Cof­fee’s Hangar on Dixon St. They’ve con­vert­ed a grim old ser­vice dock into a com­bi­na­tion of fac­to­ry and tem­ple to the sacred bean, and its open­ing brought Insta­gram to a grind­ing halt* as well as spark­ing a debate about why any­one would spend $9 on a cup of cof­fee. The answer: because it’s freak­ing deli­cious.

*prob­a­bly