Long live the Long Lunch

The Mediterranean’s have it right.

I went to the Logan Brown Novem­ber Fresh Fri­day lunch club today. Sean (Clou­s­ton) decides on the dishes each week based on what’s fresh and appeal­ing at the mar­kets and his travels and wal­lah! What a fant­ast­ic way to get into the week­end groove.

Today’s courses were LB bread and gazpacho accom­pan­ied by an unusu­al Tono Albarino wine from the Hawkes Bay (a Span­ish vari­et­al), slow roas­ted Coastal Spring Lamb shoulder with for­aged NZ coastal spin­ach (who knew we had such a thing?), oth­er fresh salads, and straw­berry tiram­isu made with Billy Scott’s ber­ries from the Hawkes Bay. All accom­pan­ied by live jazz. And great com­pany.

Sub­lime.

And mar­velous fun carving and shar­ing the lamb, which was so gen­er­ous in size that three of our group took home shoulder remains.

I also believe if you sneak down to the Mary Pot­ter Hos­pice Straw­berry Fest­iv­al on 26 Novem­ber you’ll be able to get your hands on some of the straw­berry tiram­isu.

To be fair, the lunch itself is really only 90-ish minutes with addi­tion­al post-pran­di­al loun­ging time entirely at your own dis­cre­tion. And there’s still two Fri­days left for you to start your new LL tra­di­tion with an LB exper­i­ence if you desire.

Oth­er places that I think might be the go for a LL (ergo leis­urely, a bit tucked away and/or plush, sequen­tial courses not ran­dom tapas etc):

• Osteria del Toro (based on their fun Sunday long Itali­an lunch)
• Duke Carvells (in that lovely hide­away atmo­sphere)
• Artis­an at the Bolton Hotel (often over­looked, a little bit plush)
• Zib­ibbo (also often over­looked)
• Dragon­fly (now doing Wed-Fri lunches)
• Pos­sibly the new White­bait (open­ing next Thursday at Clyde Quay)

Oth­er tasty things I can recom­mend from this week:

• The Chamo­mile Honey Sour cock­tail at the new Hide­away speak­easy.
• Ditto their pecan pie (a fuller account of Hide­away here if you fancy).
• The Foxtail/Foxglove pump­kin baba gan­oush and harissa with flat­breads.
• The goat cheese and wal­nut whole­meal crum­pets with honey and thyme at the Hangar.
• The polenta with wal­nuts, grilled pear and gor­gonzola béchamel at Char­ley Noble (although do note their prices have gone up $2-$3 per dish recently).

Eat on!