I’ve lived in cent­ral Wel­ling­ton for more than five years and had no idea there was a hotel on The Ter­race behind Wil­lis Street, nestled just over a dark res­id­en­tial hill. The more you know. 

A few weeks back, I got to sample the WOAP fest­iv­al menu of the hotel res­taur­ant, For­age Kit­chen + Bar, along with oth­er food enthu­si­asts, ins­tagram­mers (my phone is old so you’ll have to use your ima­gin­a­tion here), etc. We were greeted with an offer of kawakawa tea and bis­cuits in the lobby before being escor­ted to the res­taur­ant, where we were fur­ther plied with drinks and nibbles. I don’t know if the dump­lings or pork belly are on the full menu some­where, but I would def­in­itely go back just to eat (anoth­er) tray of that pork. 

After eat­ing [redac­ted] slices of pork belly, it was time for the actu­al meal. (For­tu­nately, I am always wear­ing my eat­ing pants.) My date and I, in the interests of sci­ence, had agreed to order dif­fer­ently so we could try everything (you’re wel­come). The entree was a dead heat – both the crab and sal­mon roul­ade and feta and car­a­mel­ised onion tart were excel­lent. Beau­ti­ful bal­ance of rich­ness (sea­food or feta) with a bit of tang (cit­rus or bal­sam­ic) to cut through it. The roul­ade might nar­rowly eke out a win on present­a­tion, but it’s hard to com­pete with col­our­ful spir­als, so no dis­respect to the tart. 

When we got to the mains, how­ever, our plan failed us. There was a sur­prise fish option! With bonus gnoc­chi! Pan roas­ted mar­ket fish with agria gnoc­chi, brown but­ter, and fried kale. (it’s still not lis­ted on the WOAP web­site either, so for your sake I really hope they’re serving it dur­ing the fest­iv­al). My date stayed true to the chick­en and quail medal­lions, while I aban­doned the risotto in favour of the fish. About two thirds of the table also went with the fish (this becomes rel­ev­ant later). 

The medal­lions turned out to be some­where between a meat­ball and a paté in tex­ture and form. The mush­room risotto and brandy jus added a rich­ness that you typ­ic­ally don’t get from poultry – it’s a fit­ting winter dish but was a bit of a mis­sion to fin­ish after all the pre-din­ner pork belly. My date usu­ally hates mush­rooms but devoured the ‘brandy-battered needle mush­rooms,’ fur­ther evid­ence in sup­port of my pat­en­ted ‘soak it in booze and fry it’ the­ory of cook­ing. I man­aged to steal one and can con­firm their deli­cious­ness. (A big bowl of those would make a great starter, if any­one from For­age is read­ing this.)

The fish dish is the real star though, so you should get that. Mar­ket fish that day was snap­per, but one of our table mates turned out to have been a fish­mon­ger, and noticed that my fish looked very dif­fer­ent to hers. We swapped bites and con­firmed dis­tinct (and deli­cious) tex­tures. When we asked the staff, they assured us it was all snap­per, but dif­fer­ent cuts. The fish­mon­ger and I remain skep­tic­al – we the­or­ised that they may have under­es­tim­ated the pop­ular­ity of the snap­per and had to bring in a backup, but both were evid­ence to the chef’s skill. The accom­pa­ny­ing gnoc­chi were delight­fully del­ic­ate and fluffy, and it’s an estab­lished fact that brown but­ter makes everything bet­ter – all in all, a clear win­ner. 

In the dessert con­test, the Otaki berry semi­freddo emerged vic­tori­ous. The dehyd­rated orange gar­nish are addict­ive and I would have hap­pily eaten a bowl of them. The chocol­ate tart’s pastry was unfor­tu­nately a bit aver­age and let down the tasty filling and chan­tilly. But the wiz­ard hat (you’ll know it when you see it) with the chocol­ate tart turned out to be a thin shell filled with a rich, creamy chocol­ate mousse, and the four of us on the end of the table liked it so much we (now many wines deep) asked the wait staff if we could have anoth­er. To their cred­it, although we’d already been annoy­ing about the fish (I prom­ise we liked both and weren’t mad about the switch!), they brought a couple more out on a plate. A+ ser­vice. (in ret­ro­spect, maybe don’t actu­ally ask a res­taur­ant to bring you a plate of extra gar­nishes, though.)

No one at the table got the veget­ari­an option (grilled veget­ables with pearl bar­ley risotto) , but if the mush­room risotto with the chick­en is any­thing to go by, it’s prob­ably pretty good. 

The staff were lovely and the ser­vice beau­ti­fully attent­ive, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing we were a table of 20+ people. My wine glass was effi­ciently refilled seem­ingly every time I turned my back, so I didn’t get to actu­ally try the beer pair­ing (For­tune Favours The Nat­ur­al­ist unfiltered pale ale) until we’d made it to dessert. It’s a good beer though, so it would pair nicely with most food. 

If you’re keen to ven­ture off the beaten track and impress your date with your know­ledge of hid­den res­taur­ants, For­age is a good bet. The din­ing room is cosy, and there are a hand­ful of tables nestled into little alcoves next to the floor-to-ceil­ing win­dows, so you can enjoy a romantic semi-private view of the city at night (if you book early, I assume). 

For­age Kit­chen + Bar’s fest­iv­al menu is on dur­ing Wel­ling­ton on a Plate from 10 ‑26 August. Shock­ingly, they do not appear to have a bur­ger, which I respect. For­age does­n’t feel like a bur­ger res­taur­ant, and props to them for not jump­ing on the band­wag­on just because they can.

(PS. Shame­less plug alert! If you need some­thing to do between meals dur­ing WOAP, Naked Girls Read­ing: Food Edi­tion on 18 August at 8 PM is exactly what it sounds like, and is a load of fun. Come watch me and some oth­er sassy women rant about food, body polit­ics, cook­ing, and the pat­ri­archy.)