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!