Recently menus.co.nz put up a piece called Auck­land is the cap­it­al of cuisine – not Wel­ling­ton, and then asked a num­ber of Wel­ling­ton food blog­gers to respond.

The Auck­land inter­net seems to be very short of space, as our response was edited quite heav­ily(*) des­pite stick­ing to the word lim­it (and links changed to pro­mote menus.co.nz pages, which I sup­pose, fair enough, but boo for los­ing pic­tures and punch­lines), so for the record, here’s our actu­al response. And then,  as a spe­cial treat, we have the full text from TAWA-nom­in­ated Hungry & Frozen as well.

Joanna says:

If Auck­land want to be the “Cap­it­al of Cuisine” then that’s fine. ‘Cap­it­al’  is a good title for a city where if you want to go to its best res­taur­ants, you’re giv­ing your money to a casino.  And ‘cuisine’ is such a lofty word that sug­gests it’s not access­ible to the com­mon diner.

Down here in Wel­ling­ton, at the Portlander, you can pay $46 for the long bone OP rib steak (pos­sibly the best steak you’ll ever eat in your life), but you can also get their deli­cious bur­gers (lamb slow-cooked in duck fat, any­one?)  for $10 at lunch­time.  You can dine at Mar­tin Bosley’s by the water and pay a small for­tune, but you can also grab a bacon but­tie from him per­son­ally at the mar­kets while you do your veget­able shop­ping. Chances are you’ve already bumped into him over a cof­fee some­where else any­way. Because that’s how Wel­ling­ton oper­ates. Our food is deli­cious, cre­at­ive and excit­ing – but it’s also access­ible.

When Monterey star­ted mak­ing their own syr­ups for cock­tails, they decided to share that concept, and so Six Bar­rel Soda Co was born. Moore Wilsons has long cham­pioned the concept of being able to buy top of the range pro­duce to cook for your­self at home.  Auck­land can give itself whatever titles it likes – we’ll be down here eat­ing while they’re talk­ing.

Laura says:

My first thought was “well, what does it mat­ter where is sup­posedly bet­ter?”

I guess it goes to show how much I love this city I live in because my fol­low-up thought was “but Wel­ling­ton just is, okay? Case closed!” So there’s my argu­ment. Kid­ding. I’ll try elab­or­at­ing.

I’m the first to acknow­ledge Auck­land is excit­ing. But what might be seen as a draw­back is really some­thing to cel­eb­rate about Wel­ling­ton city: it’s com­par­at­ively tiny. You can throw a dart any­where (please don’t lit­er­ally do this) and undoubtedly hit some­where serving up incred­ible qual­ity food. On Cuba Street alone exists the kind of vari­ety and qual­ity that you might have to drive miles to loc­ate in sprawl­ing Auck­land. (Sigh: I missed out on pop­u­lar Little and Fri­day when up in cent­ral Auck­land recently – it was so far away, and by the time I could’ve got myself there, it would’ve been closed.)

We do boutique – Crum­pet serving hand­made crum­pets, Six Bar­rel Soda serving hand­made sodas. We have count­less inter­na­tion­al cuisines, from Amer­ic­ana to Malay­si­an. Fancypants din­ing – why, where to begin! Mar­tin Bos­ley’s. Hum­ming­bird, Mat­ter­horn, Logan Brown, Arbit­rageur, Pravda…Don’t even get me star­ted on our amaz­ing cof­fee. Oh wait: it’s bet­ter than any­where. Moore Wilson provides fas­cin­at­ing ingredi­ents without – import­antly – sac­ri­fi­cing super­mar­ket prac­tic­al­ity, and the City Mar­ket sees the afore­men­tioned Mar­tin Bos­ley cheer­fully mak­ing bacon but­ties for the crowds. All with­in such a small space. Hav­ing nev­er par­ti­cip­ated, I could­n’t say how Auck­land’s ver­sion of the hugely suc­cess­ful Wel­ling­ton on a Plate com­pares- I’m sure it’d be fun to find out.

To con­clude: Auck­land is great, but Wel­ling­ton is the best. Save that money you would’ve spent on pet­rol while idling in traffic to get from one side of Auck­land to the oth­er, and use it on amaz­ing food in Wel­ling­ton, after the merest of strolls from A (where you are) to B (many incred­ible cafes, minutes away.) And if there’s any­thing I learned from watch­ing the Olympics, it’s that win­ning per cap­ita is totally val­id.

For the record, the only edit­ing we’ve done on guest posts (as far as we can remem­ber any­way) besides fix­ing apo­strophes is to remove the phrase “guilty pleas­ure” because food should nev­er have a mor­al char­ac­ter attached to it. Unless you’re eat­ing the still-beat­ing heart of a human being in front of their face. Or you ask for a really good piece of steak cooked “medi­um”. Then you should feel guilty as fuck.