Feeling chipper

On top of all the recent open­ings, there are sev­er­al more bars, restau­rants, cafés clubs and oth­er new places to look for­ward to in the next few months.

One sur­pris­ing and wel­come trend is the re-emer­gence of cen­tral city fish and chip shops. An out­fit called Fish n’ Chips on Tory looks (at the time of writ­ing) to be just about to open, and the promised deliv­ery ser­vice will help break the stran­gle­hold that piz­za has on the shut-in mar­ket. The Mt Vic Chip­pery (apolo­gies for the Face­book link) on Majorib­anks St looks just a bit fur­ther away from open­ing, but their con­nec­tion with the City Mar­ket sug­gests some sort of gourmet empha­sis. That does­n’t seem to be the case at the SoHo café on Tarana­ki St, where the recent­ly added menu of such sub­ur­ban kiwiana chip­pie sta­ples as hot­dogs, pineap­ple rings and crab­sticks sits odd­ly above the bot­tles of Jim Beam and Frangeli­co on the bar shelves.

In addi­tion to the clus­ter of cheap­ies in the new com­plex under the frilly veran­dah, Tory St is see­ing quite a few move­ments. This Fri­day sees the for­mal open­ing of Pup­pies, as mul­ti-chan­nel music-scene leg­end Blink kicks some life back into the com­fort­ably dingy space that was Hap­py. It’ll be more of an occa­sion­al music venue than a bar as such, but the crush­wor­thy line-up of indie, exper­i­men­tal and elec­tro out­fits looks set to start a neon traf­fic jam form­ing between Tory and Cuba streets. Some have already sug­gest­ed that rehearsals here were the real cause of the low hum heard over Mt Vic­to­ria.

Mean­while, you may have noticed that Red Gin­ger has moved out of the space below Hawthorn Lounge. There’s work going on inside, and after a rad­i­cal refit and exten­sion it will be the new home of Pan de Muer­to, which closed down its Sand­wich­es oper­a­tion last week­end. Accord­ing to the event infor­ma­tion for their clos­ing gig, the old Pan de Muer­to space will become some­thing called “PICKLE Eat­ing House & Bar”. I’ve no idea how lit­er­al­ly they’ll take their theme: any­one for pick­le­backs?

Near­by, the large half-sunken ten­an­cy under Our Tel’s Cen­tu­ry City Hotel was always intend­ed to be a restau­rant, but has lan­guished as a vacant space (and occa­sion­al Appren­tice set) for what seems like years. It’s now been leased, and rumour has it that a restau­rant or bar is final­ly on the cards. Giv­en the space’s her­itage and ellip­ti­cal geome­tries, I won­der whether it’s time for an Ecsta­sy Plus revival (oh sweet Beelze­bub, no!).

On the next block sea­wards, the nar­row space that was once var­i­ous incar­na­tions of Schoc/Ciocco looks it will soon be reopen­ing as a bar and café called Poquito. I don’t know many more details, but the name strong­ly sug­gests some sort of Latin Amer­i­can tapas joint.

Down in the Courte­nay quar­ter, it’s refresh­ing to see that the for­mer Temperance/Estadio space (or at least the Blair St sec­tion) is about to come back to life. Recent­ly it’s been used just for brew­ing by the Black Dog Brew­ery Co, but they’re about to re-open as a pub and off-licence, com­plete with lean­ers, tast­ing tables and “growler fill­ing sta­tion” (down, boy!). The brew­ery is owned by DB, as was the ill-fat­ed Tem­per­ance, but I have it on good beer-geek author­i­ty that the on-site nano-brew­ery is in good hands. Now, if we can only get some­one to make the rest of the space work: Welling­ton’s miss­ing a per­for­mance space that suits the more ver­ti­cal arts.

The big news near upper Cuba St is the immi­nent open­ing of cen­tral Welling­ton’s first Light­house cin­e­ma. This will mean that snob­bish cinephiles (not that we know any­one like that) won’t have to brave the bridge & tun­nel crowds down on Courte­nay to get their cel­lu­loid fix. I use the word “cel­lu­loid” quite wrong­ly, since it will be an all-dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence behind its John Mills-designed brick and glass façade. The three micro-the­atres and atten­dant café will bring yet more life to a grad­u­al­ly bright­en­ing cor­ner of dark old Wigan St.

If ever a site was cursed, it must be 201 Cuba St. While it became a grand insti­tu­tion as Orsini’s (ask a boomer to tell you about the police raids), since then it’s been through more changes than Doc­tor Who, hav­ing a go at being every­thing from a piz­za joint to a gay bar to sev­er­al attempts at Indi­an or Malaysian restau­rants, often with good food but comedic ser­vice. The last of those (Kinara) closed not long ago, and it’ll reopen soon in quite a dif­fer­ent guise as Char­lotte Steak­house & Grill. I don’t know much more about it, but I sus­pect it will do what it says on the tin. Let’s just hope it does it well, and sticks around.

Speak­ing of gay bars, there’s been a bit of a gap in the mar­ket since Club Ivy closed down and was replaced by a very dif­fer­ent male demo­graph­ic at Cal­en­dar Girls. But Ivy is set to reopen, this time in a base­ment under the James Smith build­ing in Low­er Cuba St. I don’t know of an open­ing date yet, but in the mean­time you can amuse your­self by read­ing the com­ments under that arti­cle.