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.