It’s day five of this year’s Welling­ton on a Plate and the city seems to be buzzing. So let’s get down to it. Here’s two events I went to on Sat­ur­day.

  • Tapas & Tast­ings with Matahi­wi Wines at Avi­da Bar
  • Wood­fire & Whisky at Ster­ling

Tapas & Tastings

I wrote about this last year, which maybe I should­n’t have. I should­n’t have told every­one how good it was before I secured my own tick­ets for this year. I missed out in the first allo­ca­tion  (rook­ie mis­take: I stu­pid­ly went for tick­ets to an event that had mul­ti­ple ses­sions first instead of this one-off) but I man­aged to get them when more went on sale. Phew. Dammit, I’m telling you again how good this is. When will I learn???? But seri­ous­ly, I real­ly rec­om­mend you go next year. Avi­da does great food and Matahi­wi make amaz­ing wine. What’s not to love?

four courses

So you try sev­en dif­fer­ent wines with four mini cours­es. You get to learn about the wines. You get a chance to win prizes in a quiz. It’s gen­er­ous hos­pi­tal­i­ty with wait staff com­ing around to top up glass­es “because the bot­tles are open any­way”. The food is deli­cious. The room has a great buzz. You don’t have to know a lot about wine to take part — you’ll learn along the way.  You can then order case­fuls of wine at dis­counts (if you want to — there’s no hard sell). It’s a lot of fun. And it’s only $50! This is def­i­nite­ly the best val­ue WOAP event I’ve been to.

Woodfire & Whisky

After a nap, it was back into town and to Ster­ling Eatery for their Wood­fire & Whisky event. Over on the WOAP site they’re call­ing it “Whiskey” but giv­en that we were drink­ing Scotch, I’m gonna lose the E (But did you know that if the coun­try has an E in the name, it’s gen­er­al­ly “whiskey” ala Ire­land and Amer­i­ca, but no E for Cana­da or Scot­land or Japan? Cool sto­ry Jo. Actu­al­ly on that, one of the whiskys we tried was Thom­son from New Zealand, so I guess that is a whiskey).

menu details

At $159 a tick­et, plus hav­ing a drink (we were rec­om­mend­ed to arrive around 6.30 for a 7pm start), and order­ing addi­tion­al whisky dur­ing the din­ner course at $14 a glass, this was a prici­er affair. But it was a thor­ough­ly delight­ful time, and worth it, if you’re pre­pared to accept that you’re the bour­geoisie. Which clear­ly I am. I did­n’t love the mack­er­el course, but I could have expect­ed that because I don’t like very fishy fish. But I could write poems about the maple-whipped but­ter on the corn­bread. It would go some­thing like “Get in me now plz / I want to eat more of you / but­ter and whisky”. many courses

I was real­ly impressed with the ser­vice at Ster­ling. The event was a sell­out, and it’s a medi­um big restau­rant, but plates were com­ing out impres­sive­ly fast for each course (as opposed to the dread­ful Fox­glove kitchen fail­ures at their event for exam­ple). We did­n’t have to sit with strangers, which is nice. We had talks from Glenmorangie/Ardberg reps about what we were drink­ing, but the talks did­n’t go on for too long. I’m not a whisky buff by any means, but I did­n’t feel talked down to or lost, so it was pitched right for me. I learned that adding a few drops of water real­ly can open up the flavours of your whisky as it takes off the alco­hol burn.

The cre­ativ­i­ty in the food was real­ly great. The only prob­lem was try­ing to make sure there was still some­thing left in your glass by the time the food came out (which we solved by order­ing more whisky). The main was very gen­er­ous­ly sized and I was wor­ried I would­n’t have room for dessert, but it turns out fresh banana chips are actu­al­ly bloody deli­cious (more like french fries rather than those atroc­i­ties they put in mues­li), espe­cial­ly when dipped in ton­ka bean ice cream (which is kind of like vanil­la) so that was­n’t too much of a prob­lem. If they do a sim­i­lar event next year — this was their first Welling­ton on a Plate event ever — do go along if you’re a whisky fan. But pack some­thing for heart­burn after­wards.

 

 

The Lock