Tomor­row begins that most mag­i­cal time of the year. The stu­pid film fes­ti­val has released my friends from its evil clutch­es and it’s time to eat, eat, eat. We’ve been cov­er­ing Welling­ton on a Plate for a  long time now and I think we’re get­ting pret­ty good at know­ing what’s what. So here’s our thoughts.

First of all, read our advice from last year the year before last (oops, our lazy bad). Yup, some of the restau­rants are closed now, but as always, you want to avoid the places that are putting their reg­u­lar food on their WOAP menu and charg­ing more for it.

Think glob­al, act local. Try lunch­es at places near your work (if you work) where you might not nor­mal­ly go. At the same time, on week­ends or evenings, maybe try some­where fur­ther afield — WOAP would be a great time to try Topor up the coast for exam­ple, or last year’s blue cheese cheese­cake in Rata at Zealan­dia makes me hap­py to rec­om­mend it for a week­end vis­it — even if you don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly care for birds.

Tak­ing bite-sized bites of WOAP is eas­i­er (and cheap­er!) this year with things like the DONUT POPUP STORE (we’re very excit­ed about this!), the moth­ertruck­ing pop­up Match Wine Bar, the Garage Project Milk­bar with pies and fried chick­en,  and the Foodtruck Trail­er Park (this year’s equiv­a­lent of pulled pork).

We’re pret­ty excit­ed about the Clash of the Cock­tails (and the use­ful web­site that lets you search by spir­it, though it would be bet­ter if you could also search for “any­thing but shell­fish” for the canape) match­ing. Because one of the WOAP spon­sors is the Spir­its Coun­cil who are so into pro­mot­ing sen­si­ble drink­ing that they even gave us glass­ware marked with stan­dard drink sizes as part of the launch swag, it would be very very irre­spon­si­ble of us to sug­gest pol­ish­ing off as many of the cock­tails as you could in one night. Unless you delib­er­ate­ly plan out your crawl to go from one end of town to a next drink at the oth­er end, and then back again etc. After all, Lux is on! Time for a good walk around!

As far as events go, I’ll report back from Din­ing Through the Decades and Aussie Rules. They’ve been going hard try­ing to pro­mote the Mind­food Pro­duc­er Awards Din­ner tomor­row night so I’d guess there’s a lot of tick­ets left if you have a big group. Heather has some advice over at Word on the Street about get­ting in train­ing for Beer­vana. Are you going to any­thing? We’re hap­py to take your guest reviews!

I haven’t even looked at the burg­ers or Dine menus prop­er­ly yet (my day job is much busier than in pre­vi­ous years, obvi­ous­ly), though frus­trat­ing­ly I’m stuck out in Thorn­don so there won’t be too many lunch­es for me. But as usu­al I’ll be look­ing for deli­cious-sound­ing things in places I might not have been to before, or places that I know will be amaz­ing based on pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences (aka Ti Kou­ka). See you at the table?

PS — you should book for the burg­ers and Dine menus when­ev­er you can. It will make your life less dis­ap­point­ing!