Tomor­row is my favourite launch of the year — the Welling­ton on a Plate pro­gramme. In advance, and with­out hav­ing looked at their web­site, here’s what I think it will include (or not) so we can look tomor­row and see if I was right or wrong.

  • There’s always a trend­ing meat (wow is that a ter­ri­ble phrase). Years ago it was pulled pork but now you can even get that at Piz­za Hut, it’s total­ly passe. We’ve seen beef cheeks, last year every­one seemed to be doing poul­try (we remem­ber the one place pass­ing off chick­en as turkey when they ran out in pre­vi­ous years) so this year I’m pre­dict­ing pastrami/corned beef to be mak­ing it big. I think we’ve seen an increase in Jew­ish-style deli din­ing, and I reck­on this is up & com­ing.
  • Mean­while, baos are every­where in Welling­ton right now so I also expect to see a lot of bao buns, and Viet­name­sey flavours even in places that aren’t Asian-cui­sine styles nor­mal­ly.
  • From gos­sip we’ve heard, the best cock­tail com­pe­ti­tion has­n’t had a huge uptake in pre­vi­ous years, which is easy to under­stand. Most peo­ple have to eat lunch so it’s easy to jus­ti­fy spend­ing on a burg­er to get in on the action, but the price of a cock­tail & canape is often the price of a burg­er so it makes sense to fill your bel­ly instead. I would not be sur­prised to see the cock­tail com­pe­ti­tion ele­ment of Welling­ton on a Plate eased out.
  • That said, we’re expect­ing to see spir­its play­ing a larg­er role than they have in the past, giv­en the growth in bou­tique gins around the region.
  • Hope­ful­ly the team have done a thor­ough proof-read­ing and sense check of all names of all entries, so we won’t have a repeat of last year.
  • Last year we tweet­ed exten­sive­ly about our hope for a Mcken­zie Broth­ers vs Bresolin Broth­ers hos­pi­tal­i­ty death match (the win­ner is our bel­lies). This prob­a­bly won’t hap­pen but would­n’t it be great if it did?
  • This is not a pre­dic­tion, more of a request. Can we please just all set­tle on one hash­tag and use that? Thank you. We humbly sug­gest #welly­on­aplate and also #burg­er­welly for burg­ers. Thank you
  • We know the fes­ti­val is in safe hands with Beth at the lead (and look at how Welling­ton has grown now with all its ramen places and rooftop bars since that post five years ago) and we’re real­ly look­ing for­ward to see­ing what’s new.

Final­ly, the sin­gle best Welling­ton on a Plate event we went to last year was the Hawthorn Lounge’s cock­tail degus­ta­tion that made dish­es inspired by clas­sic Welling­ton dish­es (like Nikau’s Kedgeree). The warmth & gen­er­ousi­ty of that night (along with the bloody deli­cious drinks) made it abun­dant­ly clear what a fam­i­ly the Welling­ton hos­pi­tal­i­ty scene is, and it was just such a plea­sure hear­ing all the sto­ries about the mak­ers. We hope more events this year will bring the love in the same way.