Drunken conversations: Beth from Eat and Greet

Every­one who’s a drinker knows that the best con­ver­sa­tions hap­pen when you are plied with good food and good drinks, so I’ve decid­ed I’m going to inter­view some choice Welling­to­ni­ans after we have been imbib­ing togeth­er.

First on the plate is Beth from Eat and Greet which launched last year and is doing a real­ly great job of talk­ing to the peo­ple behind the food of Welling­ton. We met at Hum­ming­bird  (which I rave about, and she recent­ly inter­viewed the chef Glen) and had some cock­tails and some wine and an enor­mous piece of  meat, and then out came the voice recorder. After the jump and these Insta­gram pic­tures, you’ll find pas­sion, drink­ing the blood of our ene­mies, mock­ing of Insta­gram, and the anti David Bur­ton…

Jo: Okay Beth, eat drink and eat and greet — I’ll write your name down prop­er­ly lat­er. Tell us what we just had for din­ner.

Beth: So we just basi­cal­ly had an uma­mi bomb in our mouths, start­ing off with a show with a mush­room syphon that syphoned off an insane­ly good mush­room tea, which we sipped while hav­ing beet­root tortelli­ni, and then we shared a big giant bone of meat togeth­er, and basi­cal­ly made dirty jokes the entire time. There was a lot of meat innu­en­do, and bone innu­en­do, but it was hard not to.

Joan­na: My god, there were raisins in our entree accord­ing to the menu (Raisins are the WORST)! So our entree was mead­ow mush­room and goat cheese tortelli­ni with gold­en raisins and pine nuts, and syphon mush­room tea, but that does­n’t say beet­root, and there was most def­i­nite­ly beet­root in our pas­ta. The mush­room tea tast­ed like you were drink­ing your oppo­nen­t’s blood after a mighty bat­tle, and it was amaz­ing.

The main was HB Sig­na­ture prime rib for two (800gm), corn on the cob, greek sal­ad (com­par­a­tive­ly not that great)
truf­fle parme­san pota­toes, spiced onion rings, red wine jus

Beth: Spiced onion rings, I’m not a big onion ring fan, like take them or leave them, but those were ridicu­lous.

Joan­na: They were great onion rings, I still think Mon­terey’s are my favourite of all time. Right, Beth, Eat and Greet Blog: why did you start a food blog? Is it because of the dra­mat­ic short­age of them in the world?

Beth: Ha! There’s a lot of food blogs in the world, and I read maybe 60% of them, so the world does not need anoth­er food blog. But I was look­ing at the Con­crete Play­ground blog awards last year, and I was look­ing at the food sec­tion, and I basi­cal­ly saw that the food blogs up in Auck­land were like “hey, this is where it’s good to eat” like Eat Here Now - like hey, I’ve gone and checked out this place.…

Joan­na: cough Welling­ton­ista cough.

Beth: But then all the food blogs down in Welling­ton were like “Hey, I made a thing”.…

Joan­na: “And isn’t it twee and delight­ful?”

Beth: “And isn’t it twee and delight­ful and look at this…”

Joan­na:  Insta­gram…

Beth: Insta­gram and flow­ers in the back­ground. And I was just like, I want there to be a trust­ed source of where to eat in Welling­ton, but then I was like, well who am I to say what is good and what isn’t, and I want­ed to give the pow­er back to the peo­ple who are behind that plate of food. There’s thought and there’s rea­son­ing behind it. And basi­cal­ly I just want­ed it to be an anti David Bur­ton. I did­n’t want it to be me say­ing what is good and what is bad, and what is authen­tic, and “that’s not how I tast­ed it when I went to this obscure lit­tle restau­rant in South East Asia”. I want­ed to go to those peo­ple who have immi­grat­ed from some­where, and they have these amaz­ing sto­ries, and actu­al­ly — there’s so much more to food than just taste and what is on your plate, and that’s what I want­ed to do.

Joan­na: That is excel­lent. Now tell me a secret Welling­ton place, and I don’t want you to be all like “OMG, there’s this restau­rant that’s down a lit­tle alley in Cuba Street and it’s called the Mat­ter­horn and it’s real­ly great”. Tell me an actu­al secret place in Welling­ton that’s great

Beth: A place that gets men­tioned a lot is KC Cafe. And I don’t know if it’s actu­al­ly secret, like you walk past it and it just looks like, you know, open until 4am on Courte­nay Place and you prob­a­bly go there when you’re drunk, but actu­al­ly it’s real­ly fuck­ing good Chi­nese food that there’s not much of in Welling­ton. It’s cheap, and if you order from the bot­tom half of the menu, it’s fuck­ing authen­tic. I mean, you’ve got your sweet and sour pork at the top, but like, go down the bot­tom and there’s tripe and weird shit, and it’s tasty.

Joan­na: Awe­some, how many ques­tions is that? Four? Two? Okay, ‚what is the ques­tion that you wish peo­ple asked you more about.

Beth: I love ask­ing a few ques­tions on my blog because I get such great answers, like “What’s some­thing about your­self that oth­er peo­ple may not know?” and anoth­er is “What’s a real­ly vivid child­hood mem­o­ry you have around food?” and both of those ques­tions invoke real­ly good answers.

Joan­na: Excel­lent! I’m not going to ask you either of those ques­tions! Right, what’s the one thing you wish Welling­ton had?

Beth: A fuck­ing rooftop bar! And a fuck­ing ramen place! All of the things! You can put that in Cap­slocks!

Who should I talk to next for Drunk­en Con­ver­sa­tions? Let me know! Is it you? We’ll put it on the com­pa­ny cred­it card (by which I mean we’ll go Dutch), and have a love­ly time.