More Auckland vs Wellington malarky

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.