Any Portlander in a storm — a night at the Rydges

Ages ago we saw an ad in the paper for The Port­lander at Rydges Welling­ton  in the paper, and after look­ing at pic­tures of their burg­ers, we head­ed along there for lunch. The lamb burg­er was slow-cooked in duck fat, and it was deli­cious, crispy bits spilling out every­where. The onion rings were heav­en too, sec­ond only to Mon­terey’s (although this com­men­ta­tor dis­agrees). Need­less to say, we were pret­ty excit­ed when we got invit­ed along to the launch offi­cial launch a cou­ple of months ago.

We guz­zled Moët like it was Lin­dauer, and oggled the shiny shiny machine they were using to slice up char­cu­terie. It was beau­ti­ful the­atre, and I think they bust it out some­times dur­ing hap­py hour. I can also tell you that their air-dried waygu beef is deli­cious.

What was even bet­ter though was servers car­ry­ing around plates of all the dif­fer­ent kinds of steak so we could try them all. One has a bone longer than my arm. Guess which one is my favourite?

Hav­ing been for din­ner a cou­ple of times now, I can say oh fuck yes, this is the Port­lander long bone OP rib, and it is AMAZING. We do rec­om­mend shar­ing it though, because it’s 500 grams. No one needs to eat that much meat by them­selves, espe­cial­ly since it’s $46. With­out sides. But if you keep read­ing, I will tell you how you can get it cheap­er. But first I want to say that the servers at Port­lander are very friend­ly, but it can be a lit­tle hard to flag them down when you need things like but­ter for your bread — and you will need but­ter because the three times I’ve tried their bread, it has been dis­ap­point­ing­ly unfresh (not stale, just not up to the stan­dard that you’d expect).

In the inter­ests of sci­ence, we decid­ed to book in for a night at the Rydges to see how it was, which is when I dis­cov­ered that if you join their pri­or­i­ty guest rewards (for free!) not only do you save on hotel room book­ings and get a lat­er check­out, but you also save 20% on all food and drinks. That is total­ly worth giv­ing up your email address for. Also I should point out that it seems you can get rooms cheap­er direct­ly through them rather than try­ing to use some­thing like Wotif or Hotels.com, just so you know (we paid $154 for the room and two break­fasts and a late check­out).

Now, look­ing back, you might remem­ber as we did a review of The Hol­i­day Inn which has now become the Rydges. It appears that decor-wise, not much has changed.  I espe­cial­ly agree with peo­ple’s com­ments that the air­con was a bit hard to use and also quite noisy. The room my boo and I stayed in was a Supe­ri­or Dou­ble on the sixth floor, and we actu­al­ly had a bit of a har­bour view. It was essen­tial­ly just big enough to fit the two dou­ble beds, but did­n’t feel too crowd­ed.  The bath was dis­ap­point­ing­ly short, but the show­er was fan­tas­tic. The bath­room walls are still that half-opaque glass, but it was­n’t an issue to leave the blind down. It was curi­ous though, because I’d under­stand its pur­pose if the show­er was in front of the glass, like, oooh, sexy show­er time like the many hotels who have spa pools in the main room, but the thing is the toi­let is right in front of the glass, not the show­er. Nev­er­mind.

Speak­ing of get­ting wet, we went down to the pool for a swim, and were impressed by the stacks and stacks of tow­els all around, but it was a very skin­ny pool and not so great for peo­ple who want­ed to float while oth­ers want­ed to swim lengths. The spa pool was love­ly, sur­round­ed by big win­dows so we could bask in the sun. I could­n’t com­ment on the gym, because ha, except that it looked very small (although I read you can get free pass­es to a big­ger gym near­by if you need them).

Room ser­vice brought us up cheese and tiramisu pret­ty speed­i­ly, although we would have wel­comed chut­ney instead of plain wal­nuts with the cheese. We were a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed in the break­fast selec­tions offered on the card hang­ing on the door though. Our room deal includ­ed two break­fasts, but there was­n’t an option for a con­ti­nen­tal break­fast (and it seemed like a waste to just order ‘toast and spreads’), so we put down that we want­ed two big break­fasts. We did­n’t see a space to select how we want­ed our eggs cooked, but they rang the next morn­ing to ask and then only deliv­ered us one. Sad face. By the time a sec­ond break­fast was deliv­ered, we did­n’t real­ly want it that much any­more. The eggs were (appar­ent­ly) cooked per­fect­ly, and the sausage and hash browns were real­ly good, but the toast was kin­da bleh. That might have been because the eggs were sit­ting on them though, and eggs are gross.

So, over­all, I love Port­lander, and will return there as often as funds and desire to eat large amounts of meat dic­tate. I would also be pret­ty com­fort­able rec­om­mend­ing The Rydges as a hotel to stay in too, although I would sug­gest that it might be a bet­ter option to go for the break­fast buf­fet, or just get break­fast in any num­ber of oth­er cafes around town.

PS — Oth­er hotels: we’d love review you too. Get in touch!