Wel­ling­ton does not have a lot of very big big hotels. I believe the Rydges has the most guestrooms (at 280), and the may­or was mis­quoted in the Domin­ion Post as say­ing Wel­ling­ton has no five star hotels – a fact the Bolton and the Museum Art Hotel would prob­ably take umbrage with. In fact, what she meant was Wel­ling­ton has no five star hotels with large con­fer­ence facil­it­ies, which is true. Wel­ling­ton does have a grand-daddy of big fancy hotels though, and that is the Inter­Con­tin­ent­al Wel­ling­ton (232 rooms).  A little while ago, their lovely mar­ket­ing man­ager Geoff invited me to the reopen­ing of their Club Lounge, and I jumped at the chance.  I must have behaved myself okay because I was also later invited to try out the new menu at Chamele­on (If you’re not into hotels, just food, you can jump straight to that bit).

For those of you who aren’t high falutin’ busi­ness exec­ut­ives who stay in fancy hotels all the time, Club Lounges are the hotel equi­val­ent to the Koru Club at air­ports – a place with com­fy seat­ing, nibbles and drinks away from the hoi palloi. Why slum it in the lobby (more on that later) when you can drink for free upstairs?

The space had just been ren­ov­ated, and it was gor­geous. High up in the build­ing amongst the recently ren­ov­ated Club rooms, the cor­ridors are very Alistair Cox-esque (though not done by him), dark wood like the Mat­ter­horn or any num­ber of Mojos, so it was sur­pris­ing to walk into a light and airy room with a great white fire­place. Actu­ally, I have a press photo, let’s use that!

white clublounge
Yes I could hap­pily spend a great deal of time here. On someone else’s dime.

Very com­fort­able. Because it was their show-off night, exec­ut­ive staff were out in force, and they were aston­ish­ingly good at work­ing the room. We were treated like roy­alty although some­how we failed to get an invit­a­tion to meet the hotel build­ing’s own­ers who were present that night (here is some­thing I did­n’t know: most hotel build­ings are owned by someone who then brings in a hotel com­pany to run them, much like oth­er build­ings will bring in a com­pany to run the cafe space in there). Per­haps my gold-dig­ging agenda is a little too vis­ible. You know what else is vis­ible? The street, from the toi­let cubicles – although we were assured it was mir­ror glass. It’s fun to pee while look­ing down at Grey Street – it would be even bet­ter had there been a thou­sand scream­ing girls out the front wait­ing for Ed Sheer­an or some­thing (musi­cians play­ing the TSB Arena often stay at the Inter­con­tin­ent­al because it’s right there, and it’s five stars, etc). Anoth­er high­light was the tower of macar­ons in all kinds of col­ours and fla­vours. Appar­ently they’re baked in-house, and they were fab­ulous. We may or may not have filled our pock­ets before we left. You can­’t take me any­where.

But you! You too can exper­i­ence the impec­cable ser­vice and beau­ti­ful fur­nish­ings of the club lounge, if you book a club room. The Inter­con­tin­ent­al’s web­site is rather short of inform­a­tion about the full suite of Club perks, oth­er than say­ing you can enjoy com­pli­ment­ary break­fast, after­noon tea and pre din­ner drinks and canapes in it. At the Rendevous in Auck­land, I know they offer club upgrades when you check in for $90 – which includes park­ing and fast inter­net.  Here based on room prices for Sat­urday night (pro tip: hotels that primar­ily cater for busi­ness trav­el­ers are always fuller and there­fore more expens­ive on Tues­days and Wed­nes­days), you’re look­ing at $369 for a deluxe king versus $549 for a club king. The room fea­tures are prob­ably dif­fer­ent – we were told that the club rooms fea­ture touch­screen  con­trols for everything from the light­ing to the cur­tains – so wheth­er that’s money well spent is an area in which your mileage may vary. Con­sider also that break­fast in Chamele­on would set you back $37 a head for full buf­fet, so if there’s two of you, and then you throw in valet park­ing at $35 and wifi at $25 (I don’t know for cer­tain if they’re included though), and let’s say four drinks ($11 each, they’ve got a beau­ti­ful range in the club lounge), the price dif­fer­ence does sort of start to jus­ti­fy itself. Well, if you can pay that much for a room in the first place. I would love to be able to, but it would have to be a very spe­cial occa­sion.

Dining at Chameleon

What you might not need such a spe­cial occa­sion for, how­ever, is check­ing out the also newly ren­ov­ated lobby, bar and Chamele­on Res­taur­ant. The lobby is no longer a throw­back to early nineties granduer, all echoey marble. Instead, there’s a doublesided fire­place, lovely vel­vet arm­chairs and a much more nat­ur­al feel­ing with dark wood and stone. Mean­while Chamele­on, which I haven’t dined in since I went for my best friend’s 12th birth­day in 1992, has also been giv­en a beau­ti­ful makeover. While they could­n’t do much about the very ’80s win­dows, tables are now light marble-topped, a big ban­quette down the middle of the room helps to absorb some of the noise, and chairs are gor­geous Scand­inavi­an wood. They have really great glass­ware and styl­ish cut­lery, because small details are import­ant. The buf­fet, neces­sary for hotel break­fasts, is now con­cealed behind more marble, and the kit­chen has been opened up and addorned with cop­per pots. The menu has been com­pletely redone too, with a focus on medi­um-sized plates of sea­son­al pro­duce, divided up by sea, farm (meat) and veget­ables. You can get two courses for $50, three for $70 or four for $90. Since we were din­ing as Chamele­on’s guests, I thought it would be fun to leave it up to the kit­chen as to what we ate, with the guid­ance that we were both big eat­ers, and that unfor­tu­nately shell­fish and I are not friends.

Things kicked off with a com­pli­ment­ary amuse bouche of blini topped with smoked sal­mon and creme fraiche. Yum!

scallopsFor the first course, Demelza was presen­ted with scal­lops and cho­ri­zo, while I got the pork brawn with celeri­ac remoulade, rock­et, pomegranate & port reduc­tion. That’s prob­ably the one thing on the menu that I would not have chosen, because quite frankly aspic reminds me of cat food, but it was sur­pris­ingly tasty, once I got past the jelly aspect of it.

a picture of delicious duck surrounded by mushroomsFor (or I sup­pose just course #2), we received duck breast cooked twice with wild mush­rooms, jer­u­s­alem artichokes, cauli­flower, bacon and truffle but­ter, as well as lem­on thyme crus­ted line-caught groper with tara­mos­al­ata, olive oil new sea­son pota­toes and tomato vinai­grette. We swapped plates half-way through, though I was very reluct­ant to give up the duck. It might sound like a crazy amount of fla­vours, but they worked togeth­er. Totally worth the $26. On the side we had what I thought at the time was a bowl of green beans, so I was sur­prised to find an egg lurk­ing at the bot­tom of it. Look­ing at the menu now, I real­ise it must have been a nicoise salad – which def­in­itely would not be worth $26, so be care­ful in your choices if you’re look­ing to get value.

The kit­chen did­n’t choose desserts for us, so, since the por­tions had not been huge and we were inde­cis­ive, we ordered three to share – a pas­sion­fruit & cori­ander tart, a vanilla pan­nacotta with rhu­barb soup and rhu­barb com­pote, and a selec­tion of petite fours. Woah. To para­phrase Ral­ph Wig­gum, desserts are where Chamele­on is a vik­ing.

desserts

rhubarb and rose petals on the edge of a plateThe pas­sion­fruit tart was nice, though the cori­ander was­n’t too obvi­ous, but those petit fours, oh lordy! Best chocol­ate mousse I’ve had (out­side of my mother­’s) piped into little tubes. The macar­ons which I have already raved about. Turk­ish Delight that was actu­ally delight­ful (though I’ll nev­er under­stand why any­one would betray Nar­nia for some­thing that does­n’t even have chocol­ate in it). The pan­nacotta jiggled most delight­fully (of course we shook it) and that soup was some­thing else entirely, such intense lovely fla­vour. Everything was plated so per­fectly too. Look at how pretty that rhu­barb is. LOOK AT IT. It would be well worth going to Chamele­on for dessert alone.

Along with the fancy food, there’s a pretty extens­ive wine list with many things avail­able by the 125ml or 250ml pours, a decent beer selec­tion includ­ing a couple of craft beers, and a loooooong whisky list. If you’re the kind of per­son who orders $95 glasses of Scotch, the Inter­con­tin­ent­al can take care of you, and frankly, so can I, okay?

But jok­ing aside, before I had din­ner there, I would have avoided Chamele­on expect­ing it to be just gen­er­ic hotel fare. Now though, I would def­in­itely go back, and am already plan­ning my next serving of that pan­nacotta. It will not be a cheap night out, but it will be a pretty and tasty one.