WOAP: Dining through the Decades

This is going to sound a bit silly, but I choose my Wel­ling­ton on a Plate events look­ing for value for money.  The silly part, obvi­ously, is that no one needs to drop over a hun­dred dol­lars a head on din­ner, but if you’re look­ing to have a degust­a­tion and matched wines, you’re going to spend more than that on a reg­u­lar night. So if we accept this Shel­ley Bridge­manesque premise, Din­ing Through The Dec­ades at five courses and matched drinks, for $140 plus rage-mak­ing Tick­etek fees, is a bar­gain. Espe­cially once I found out that Glen Taylor from Taylor’s on Jack­on Street, formerly of Hum­ming­bird, was now a chef-part­ner in the res­taur­ant. So I booked myself and three oth­ers in for a trip back through time. Tonight was sold out but there are still tick­ets for Monday the 17th left. Run, don’t walk. Oh, and if you are going to go – beware, there are spoil­ers ahead…

First up, Har­vey Wall­bangers as there was­n’t much decent wine being drunk in the ’70s in New Zea­l­and. Our glasses got filled a couple of times. That was nice. Also nice? These giant cheese balls, served up with par­fait. If you’re won­der­ing about the cheese to bread roll ratio, well, what are you, some kind of Air New Zea­l­and pat­ron?

I had a sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that Prawn Cock­tail would fea­ture on the menu, so I got in touch with the res­taur­ant to say that I can­’t eat shell­fish or crus­ta­ceans (well, I can eat them and I like them, but then they exit my body, rap­idly, from both ends). Nev­er­the­less, I prepped my com­pan­ions to the pos­sib­il­ity that they would have to eat my prawns for me (oh god the pain) but I was delighted to receive a sal­mon cock­tail instead, diced in cubes and I believe mar­in­aded in beet­root. Yummmm. There’s a reas­on that Glen is the Oracle for Ora King Sal­mon, and that reas­on was in the glass. The oth­ers were a little jeal­ous of my sal­mon actu­ally, but also thor­oughly delighted with their prawns.

We’d worked our way through balls &  con­ver­sa­tion about key parties, then cham­pagne and stock mar­ket crashes, so it was time to turn our atten­tion to the ’90s. I’d nev­er actu­ally heard of Pierre Koff­mann before, but that’s what Google is for, after all.

The sig­na­ture dish of the res­taur­ant was pig’s trot­terwith chick­en mous­seline, sweet­breads and morels.^[2] Celebrity chef Marco Pierre White has called this “favour­ite dish of all time”.^[4]

His trot­ters were deli­cious, and the big oaky chardon­nay they’d had to work extra hard to find was a very fine match. Ooooof what an intensely rich dish though. Actu­ally read­ing this descrip­tion makes me real­ise that what I thought was a SPECTACULARLY meaty mush­room must have been a sweet­bread, which I had been intro­duced to by Glen in the first place. Circle of life, etc.

The next course, the con­fu­sion of fusion, made me, and I quote myself here “pick up my plate and lick it out like we met on OKC”.

I like my fil­let more on the blue side but if you’re pop­ping out 75 cov­ers at once it’s totally under­stand­able that they’d be served  medi­um rare. They were still deli­cious, and I have nev­er felt quite so glad to see a veget­able on a plate as I felt about that bok choy. The Otago pinot noir was much more famil­i­ar ground than the but­tery chardon­nay of the pre­vi­ous dish, and I was super pleased to get a top up too.

Then Adam Newall came out to talk about what we’d been eat­ing, and dragged Glen out to explain the molecu­lar cook­ing of the dessert. They were hav­ing fun, dessert was ridicu­lous with its foams and spheres and decon­struc­ted lem­on tart­ness, but it was also deli­cious. The cock­tail was­n’t a great match – two sweets togeth­er was a bit of a clash, but it was a good drink for the 2010s.

Really import­antly, as well as the food and the drink being amaz­ing, ser­vice was impec­cable AND tables were split up so we did­n’t have to hear any­one talk­ing about their invest­ment prop­er­ties and they wer­en’t sub­jec­ted to our lengthy meat puns. Hope­fully. It was not a cheap din­ner, but for the qual­ity and quant­ity of what we were served, it was enter­tain­ing, mem­or­able and there­fore good value. If you’re in a pos­i­tion where you’re able to do so, you should def­in­itely go along t0morrrow night.