lights and beerWhen the amaz­ing people behind Wel­ling­ton on a Plate offer you tick­ets at the last minute to the very pop­u­lar and sold out col­lab­or­a­tion between La Boca Loca and Par­rot Dog  Brew­ery, you might be sur­prised at how hard it is to find someone to go along with you, because appar­ently there is a plague in town, but then you might remem­ber that your poor pub­lic ser­vant fath­er is hav­ing a shit of a time lately and deserves a spe­cial treat, so all is well.

Wellington’s Par­rot­Dog Brew­ery plays host to a deli­cious even­ing in part­ner­ship with Miramar’s La Boca Loca Res­taur­ant.

They are serving up sev­er­al hot and fresh Mex­ic­an dishes, pre­pared on-site at the brew­ery amongst the shiny stain­less steel tanks. Each dish will be matched with its own fla­vour­some craft beer.

There will even be some Mex­ic­an music cour­tesy of DJ Chefito and loc­al beer with loc­ally made Mex­ic­an cuisine: Vamos!

This would have been a gor­geous event to be at in sum­mer, with little stalls set up for each food & beer pair­ing, and keg tables set up to rest your glasses on. The bunt­ing and the light­ing was lovely (though not suit­able for tak­ing pho­tos with your phone), but with con­crete floors and big stain­less steel tanks, even with the num­ber of people around, we were all wear­ing our coats. Me being me, when Will took the micro­phone and told us there were five things to taste and we could have two each (at least), I wondered if that would be enough to eat, but I had for­got­ten the filling power of beer!

ceviche and beerSo, on entry we were each giv­en a taster of a spe­cially brewed beer made with a Mex­ic­an herb that is as yet unnamed (the beer, that is, the herb has a name which I have very use­fully for­got­ten EDIT: but now they’ve told me on Twit­ter, I can tell you it’s Epaozte), then each of the five dishes were matched with anoth­er beer. Steak & mush­rooms served on thick polenta-ish pan­cakes was served with a Bit­ter Bitch IPA, wild boar was shred­ded and matched to a Dead Canary Pale Ale, dessert which was like a deep-fried crunchy whoopie pie came with a Dogg dark Ale, and the Blood­hound red IPA came with a slightly odd but still deli­cious Kina soup, done in a chili sauce with a spe­cial kind of corn. That one def­in­itely left a spicy tingle. My favour­ite beer and food though was the but­ter­fish ceviche topped with crunchy grasshop­per salt (actu­ally made from grasshop­pers), served with the Flax­en Feath­er  blonde ale. The grasshop­pers were really tasty. My dad got tipsy and reques­ted Mex­ic­an songs from the gui­tar player/singer, who obliged, the brew­ers and the chefs floated around answer­ing ques­tions,  and all togeth­er it was a super pleas­ant even­ing. I’m pleased the ladies got to use the inside toi­let while men were releg­ated to the porta­loos out­side in the wind.

What sur­prised me though was that there was also a beer & food event at Gar­age Pro­ject tonight as part of Wel­ling­ton on a Plate (where they were keep­ing all the beards nor­mally asso­ci­ated with craft beer) which surely would have made it a bit of a Sophie’s Choice for hop heads – except that the Gar­age Pro­ject do was with Mon­soon Poon, and you know how we feel about that.

But while we’re on that sub­ject, last week, we were at the Loc­al­ist Jam at the City Gal­lery, and in between bacon donuts, we were aston­ished to hear Mike Egan from Mon­soon Poon and also head of the hos­pit­al­ity asso­ci­ation (EDIT) Res­taur­ant Asso­ci­ation say there is no Mex­ic­an res­taur­ant scene in Wel­ling­ton. That would prob­ably come as a bit of a shock to La Boca Loca. And Viva Mex­ico. And Cali­ente. And Tequila Joe’s (even if that’s Tex-Mex). And Sweet Mother­’s Kit­chen.  And Hot Like a Mex­ic­an. Per­haps what he meant was he has yet to open an expens­ively designed ven­ue to serve a  bas­tard­ised ver­sion of the cuisine at inflated prices to cater to the Churton Park crowd? But there’s already a Fly­ing Burrito Broth­ers, so we’re mys­ti­fied…