WOAP: Burger, burger, bugger!

TL:DR: we ate two pretty decent bur­gers and will nev­er return to Fox­glove.

Pig Mac at the Featherston

On Fri­day at lunch­time I knew I had to eat some­thing WOAPy in order to keep up the reviews, but was crav­ing fresh­ness. I thought I might be able to get into Annam without a book­ing, because I’m just one per­son and per­fectly happy to sit at the bar, but it was not to be. Without want­ing to go too much fur­ther or waste more time, I popped into the Feath­er­ston and they were happy to have me, even though the place was heav­ing. No news­pa­pers or magazines in sight to read, but I got a com­fy table and my water topped up reg­u­larly.

Slowsmoked pulled pork with red cab­bage, fen­nel and apple slaw in a bri­oche bun with house­made barbe­que sauce, smoked apple frit­ter and fries (NF)

Pulled pork may be so a couple of years ago, but this was a very tasty rendi­tion of it, not overly sweet and with a decent amount of smoke to it. I would have appre­ci­ated a little more spice, and the bun could have been hot­ter, but the apple frit­ters on the side were gor­geous (and it was smart not to put them inside the bur­ger). The chips were stand­ard pub chips, well cooked, and the whole thing decently priced and the ser­vice was good. Noth­ing ground-break­ing but bur­gers don’t always have to be. I will def­in­itely go back to the Feath­er­ston for lunch­times when I am in the mood for pub food done well.

Sterling Burger

Awatoru ven­ison bur­ger with beet­root rel­ish, house­s­moked cheese, juni­per pickled celeri­ac and Ster­ling secret sauce, with truffled shoes­trings

Plenty of people all over social media have been lov­ing the hell out of this bur­ger, but I thought it was just okay, though it’s the only bur­ger I’ve had that I could pick up and eat eas­ily. The patty was too thin for the ven­ison to stand out over the beet­root, and the fries were just like luke­warm offer­ings from Mac­Don­alds, no sign of the truff­ling. I would have sent them back, but I was already aware that we were dick­bag guests, giv­en that we were a tipsy group who’d booked for ten people, changed that to five people and then had two more people show up 20 minutes late.

Foxglove Secret Garden Winemaker’s Dinner

Enchant­ment and sur­prise awaits in Foxglove’s Secret Garden. Enjoy a deli­cious five-course degust­a­tion din­ner or lunch with an espe­cially designed menu accom­pan­ied by out­stand­ing Mar­tin­bor­ough Vine­yard wines. Award-win­ning wine­maker Paul Mason will talk you through his selec­ted wines to accom­pany every course. A truly magic­al exper­i­ence cel­eb­rat­ing loc­al garden pro­duce, great wine and a secret after- party through the ward­robe.

So, clearly I had hos­pit­al­ity karma wait­ing for me, but I don’t believe the oth­er 101 pat­rons deserved the incom­pet­ence and inhos­pit­al­ity of this event. Tick­ets were $155 which is not cheap, but I talked my sis­ter and friend into com­ing along think­ing that it would be a lush affair full of fun. It’s great copy, after all. Does­n’t that sound like a good event?

When we got to the ball­room at 6.30pm – the time on the web­site and con­firm­a­tion emails,  we found it adorned beau­ti­fully with chan­deliers, strings of lights and flowers every­where. So far so good. But nor­mally at a din­ner like this, you’d walk in and be handed a glass of bubbles. We were poin­ted to the cash bar. I took one look at the flimsy fold­ing chairs and asked for some­thing more robust, which they very kindly fetched from the bal­cony. So glad I did, giv­en that din­ner took until ELEVEN PM to fin­ish. I feel sorry for how uncom­fort­able every­one else would have been even if the din­ner had run at a nor­mal pace.

It was 7.15pm before we had our first glass of the wine­maker­’s wine in our hands, and with nine tables of 12 people in the room, food was just as slow to come out. We’d tweeted earli­er in the week about how impressed we were that Fox­glove were email­ing guests to find out their food aller­gies. The first course was cray­fish with salad leaves. Or, if you’re aller­gic to shell­fish, you received just the salad. Not even any extra oyster mush­rooms to bump up the pro­tein tex­ture. That seemed odd giv­en the advance notice they had of people’s diet­ary require­ments, but it turns out that was one of a con­tinu­ing series of poor hos­pit­al­ity choices.

Not only were we assigned tables, we were also assigned seats, pre­sum­ably to help with the diet­ary require­ments. Obvi­ously the people you sit with have an impact on how much you enjoy the night*, espe­cially when there is so much time to kill in between courses. It was a good half hour or more before the second course, anoth­er dish that was actu­ally sup­posed to be served cold, came out. The sal­mon gravlax was lovely, and did go very well with the chardon­nay, although most glasses were nearly empty by that stage because of the wait. The woman next to me asked for more chardon­nay, and was poin­ted to the cash bar. She said “Not at a $150 din­ner I don’t!” and she was giv­en more wine. No one else at the table was asked if we’d like any more. We all would have liked more wine.

We def­in­itely would have liked more wine in the HOUR it took for the first main course to come out. The fault was def­in­itely in the kit­chen giv­en how the wait­resses were lined up wait­ing for the food to come out, but they were also some­times car­ry­ing one plate at a time. Wine glasses were cleared off tables (no offer of more wine), washed, and then returned to the tables empty, and then they were filled. The lights were too bright and there was no back­ground music. Our beef was sup­posed to be hot but was cold. An hour later, our pork belly was also stone cold. And we were sober. Very sober.

A full quarter of the room had left by that stage, giv­en it was 10.30 and the event had star­ted at 6.30pm. The dessert wine was deli­cious, but how it took an hour to bring out a slice of cheese­cake is bey­ond me.  There was no chance we would go to the exclus­ive after­part because it was after 11pm and we were dis­gruntled, cold, tired, hungry and sober.

The wine­maker told us to “drive home safely”. You should nev­er be able to drive after a wine­maker­’s din­ner, espe­cially one that takes SO LONG between courses. Glasses should be kept full. Enter­tain­ment should be provided.  I regret buy­ing tick­ets to the event. I regret mak­ing my friends buy tick­ets to the event. I regret any money I’ve ever spent at Fox­glove before. What a cold inhos­pit­able room that was, and what a strik­ing con­trast to the (cheap­er) amaz­ing event at the Bolton and the very cheap wine quiz at Avida the week before. This was their first Wine­maker­’s Din­ner, but they have large events in the ball­room all the time, surely they aren’t run this poorly? Paul the wine­maker said on Twit­ter that the delays were out of his con­trol, but unfor­tu­nately I’m always going to asso­ci­ate Mar­tin­bourgh Vine­yard with Fox­glove’s incom­petance.

The woman next to me told me that the “well-paid” people in the pub­lic ser­vice will just pop into Dav­id Jones for a thou­sand dol­lar hand­bag and shoes, and then maybe buy a little black dress. I sug­ges­ted that actu­ally people in the pub­lic ser­vice aren’t paid that well com­pared to in the private sec­tor (even if they can afford $155 din­ners if they ration­al­ise them care­fully),  and she told me I was wrong. Then she com­plained about hav­ing to pay cus­toms duty on her $350 skin­care pack­ages. One of the two of us works in the pub­lic ser­vice. Guess who?