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The long-stand­ing Lat­it­ude 41 at Queens Wharf has been replaced by Bin 44, which moves towards being more of a bar than a café.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