I feel like I’ve been vis­it­ing old friends this week, while I wait for some new ones to arrive.

A Deluxe cafe cook­ie, a Nikau brunch, a Zibib­bo plat­ter, and a Capi­tol break­fast (can you tell it was a teenage-free week­end??).

My cook­ie at Deluxe was enlivened by an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion with a fel­low cus­tomer about whether hav­ing a ‘favourite’ meant you had to restrict your­self to just one choice.  My phi­los­o­phy — dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances call for dif­fer­ent favourites, so nope, no restric­tions here.

Nikau sage eggsNikau deliv­ered as always, and I was amused to find that my four fel­low brunch­ers all chose the famed Sage Eggs, but with dif­fer­ent accom­pa­ni­ments — salmon, sausages, bacon and black pud­ding.  Which got me won­der­ing if a book could be writ­ten about sage egg ther­a­py along the lines of Schoc’s choco­late ther­a­py with dif­fer­ent choic­es reveal­ing dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty traits.…! My but­ter­milk pan­cakes with hon­eyed but­ter and apple syrup were sim­ple but tasty, the Nikau phi­los­o­phy.

Enough of the phi­los­o­phy.

Zibib­bo has a tapas plat­ter for two that’s hard to go past for a pre-show graze and is always impres­sive (go and see Mid­sum­mer at Cir­ca this week if you can fit it in, great fun!), and Capi­tol’s warm semoli­na pud­ding with fruit com­pote (and french toast with rum and raisin cream cheese for him) deliv­ered the Capi­tol-expect­ed unique­ness to round out the week­end plea­sures.

Adam Newell at Zibib­bo has a range of degus­ta­tion and mas­ter class events for those want­i­ng some­thing more, and I see they’re also lin­ing up to do Xmas Day lunch­es and din­ner this year if you’re of a mind.  Tempt­ing.

He’s also the Chef de Cui­sine at Welling­ton’s Le Cor­don Bleu School, so a busy man.

Capitol semonlinaThe new things I’m wait­ing for?

  • Charley Noble — the new ven­ture from the White house folks open­ing today and locat­ed in the strength­ened Hud­dart Park­er build­ing on the cor­ner of Cus­tom­house Quay and Post Office Square. Cook­ing by wood fire and acces­si­ble pric­ing I under­stand.

Yum yum!