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!