A sausagefest with Harrington’s at Logan Brown

As should be obvi­ous by now, we love a free din­ner here at the Wel­ling­tonista. So when we were invited by Harrington’s Small­goods to din­ner at Logan Brown, of course we said yes. It ended up being one of the more inter­est­ing din­ners I’ve been to in my life so this review is going to be pos­sibly more in my head than it should be.

First – the sell. Harrington’s is launch­ing a new look and focus­ing on the con­sumer mar­ket, and one way to do that is through the use of influ­en­cers. As much as I hate the term, I under­stand it. I go eat a fancy din­ner, you read about it, and then you go to the super­mar­ket and choose to buy the products because I said how deli­cious they were – or increas­ingly, because you saw a good-look­ing photo of them. But also, you make the choice because I tell you the good things about Harrington’s – that they use free range pork & beef, all from anim­als raised in New Zea­l­and, and products are made loc­ally in Miramar. That’s how the saus­age is made. And what deli­cious saus­ages they are.

I took my mostly veget­ari­an les­bi­an friend Surly along, because who’s bet­ter at a saus­age fest? We were warmly greeted by the lovely lovely women from the PR agency put­ting the do togeth­er. I was thrilled to dis­cov­er that my friend Emily & her hus­band were there too, cover­ing the event for the Spinoff, along with a writer from Cap­it­al, an Ins­tagram­mer & and her part­ner who owns a cafe.  Din­ner was served in the private din­ing room, up a tiny wind­ing stair­case at the front of res­taur­ant. It felt like walk­ing up a castle tur­ret and it must be a night­mare to carry plates up. I switched place cards with Surly to avoid sit­ting next to a cer­tain vin­tage food crit­ic. I should­n’t have wor­ried though because he was poin­tedly ignor­ing me. Instead I found myself next to one of the play­ers from Dirty Polit­ics. Ahh, Wel­ling­ton.

Food is of course extremely polit­ic­al. Just con­sider canned toma­toes, for example, or how some people feel the need to demon­ise the poor as if they’re not cap­able of mak­ing their own decisions accord­ing to what is avail­able to them. It’s why I sup­port Kaibosh to allay some of my middle class guilt. And it’s why I can­’t just write “everything we ate was deli­cious” as my whole post. But everything was deli­cious.

The charm­ing Har­ring­ton’s Honcho Angus Black talked us through the his­tory of Har­ring­ton’s, and how he’d moved from cheff­ing to saus­age-mak­ing. Logan Brown chef Sean Clou­s­ton came up to greet us, and talk us through the menu in advance. It was a four course cel­eb­ra­tion of all things saus­age, using Har­ring­ton’s in everything but the dessert. The first course was a selec­tion of many dif­fer­ent little treats.

The mini reuben was made with purple potato rewena bread, and it was abso­lutely divine, crunchy and salty and cheesy. I always think that I won’t like black pud­ding, based purely on the fact that it’s described as a blood saus­age and I’m one of those annoy­ing people who don’t like to think where their meat came from before it was on my plate. That’s ridicu­lous though, because as a crumb it’s deli­cious, rich & earthy. The slice of white pud­ding under the beet­root gratin was even more tasty – and that’s not just because I find “milk & pork” a more pal­at­able-sound­ing com­bin­a­tion than “blood & beef”. Eel was anoth­er pleas­ant sur­prise for this Pāke­hā. If you ever want to eat some­thing you’re not sure you’ll like, have a great chef cook it for you – if you have the chance. I know not every­one gets the chance. And that’s a shame. It would be won­der­ful if good, inter­est­ing food could be more access­ible to oth­ers.

Speak­ing of access­ible, we talked about how now that Logan Brown is run­ning Bel­lamy’s, it’s become more of a des­tin­a­tion res­taur­ant for lunches. Food is a great gate­way to becom­ing more polit­ic­ally engaged – though Bel­lamy’s is pricey so it’s not going to reach the most dis­af­fected. But it’s good for the politi­cians to be sur­roun­ded by the people they’re rep­res­ent­ing, rather than being cloistered away. Although now I’m reminded of John Key’s quote about how he meets every­day people all the time, in the Koru Lounge, so…

Speak­ing of massive coiled turds, it was onto the the next course. Noah served a Rip­pon Gamay in massive glasses. The Toulouse saus­age, white and black gar­lic, pickled red cab­bage and mus­tards was a thing of beauty, lightly spicy. I had four inches, then I took anoth­er four inches in. I could have taken a whole foot if I was­n’t sav­ing myself. The house­made sour dough bread was beau­ti­ful too, though it did­n’t seem like any­one else was eat­ing any. But it was­n’t that people were swear­ing off carbs. Down the table, the res­taur­ant crit­ic saw fit to cor­rect someone as he spoke about mac’n cheese. “Actu­ally, it’s macar­oni” he sneered. Cool story, bro.

We ate our milk-braised porchetta, gor­gonzola polenta, green len­tils, alli­ums with the most incred­ible almost spicy Iron­clad Franc blend from Man’o War on Waiheke. I only just man­aged to restrain myself from steal­ing oth­er people’s wine, it was that good. It went amaz­ingly with the rich pork that fell apart with the light­est touch of a fork, cut­ting through the fat.

A con­ver­sa­tion note about scent & memor­ies led to Surly telling a ridicu­lous story from her Goth days. “This is what hap­pens with social media” said the res­taur­ant crit­ic dis­ap­prov­ingly, in what he may have thought was an aside. I get it, it can be scary when kids come and play on your lawn and it seems the world is mov­ing on without you. I share the feel­ing because I still love blogs and RSS and Twit­ter while a lot of food cov­er­age has moved a lot to Ins­tagram, and I have feel­ings about that. The one food Ins­tagram­mer I enjoy is Titty Eats, as he actu­ally reviews what he’s eat­ing, though I’m not 100% sure if he pays for it all or not (I’m fine with get­ting food for free, but I would like the trans­par­ency there).

Sean came back to ask if we were hav­ing our desserts with whisky. Damn, that would have been good. Don’t get me wrong, the Noble semil­lion from Pegas­us Bay was amaz­ing, but for my tastes, I prefer a sweet wine with a savoury food, and a savoury wine with a sweet food. Sweet on sweet isn’t my favour­ite. I appre­ci­ate this is prob­ably the most Shel­ley Bridge­man prob­lem a per­son could ever have. The menu for dessert read “Sweet treats from Ingrid’s cake tin” so I can­’t be entirely more spe­cif­ic about what we ate. There was rhu­barb involved, and lem­on curd, and hazel­nuts. It was utterly utterly delight­ful.

When the table shuffled around, Steve Logan came to sit at our end. I was super impressed he could still remem­ber staff from back in 1997. Wel­ling­ton is a small world, and the hos­pit­al­ity world is even smal­ler.  We talked about wheth­er Wel­ling­ton on a Plate has become too bur­ger-fied, as per some media, and the con­sensus was that it hasn’t. Bur­gers offer an easi­er way into the food scene, and often at a more access­ible price. I do wish though that more oppor­tun­it­ies to sit down with hos­pit­al­ity legends like Steve were avail­able to more people, without the hefty price tag of Wel­ling­ton on a Plate events. The exper­i­ences that I’ve treas­ured the most across fest­ivals is when you get to hear from the people involved about why they do what they do, and how they do it. To me that’s what the fest­iv­al should be all about. Hear­ing Angus speak about his kit­chen career, and how very many people made the same joke that I did – that with a name like Angus he was destined for butchery  – and the care that Harrington’s take when select­ing the sup­pli­ers they work with, that’s the really inter­est­ing part.

I’m more than aware of my own immense priv­ilege in being able to go to more than my fair share of events though. It becomes a self-per­petu­at­ing cycle too – I’m inter­ested in food, so I go to food events, so I get more inter­ested in food, so I write about food, so I get invited to more events. That’s why it’s so import­ant that there are fresh voices in the mix too. Madeleine Chapman’s review of The Grove for example, is one of the best pieces of food writ­ing I’ve read in a long time because it’s not by someone who’s been jaded by the exper­i­ences. Lorde save us from grumpy old men com­plain­ing that their nap­kins don’t get picked up off the floor. I think I need to stop being greedy and send Emma along to the next fancy invit­a­tion we receive. But I would have been very sad to miss this din­ner, because it was deli­cious, most of the people were really really lovely, and I’ll prob­ably nev­er have anoth­er chance to eat in the private din­ing room at Logan Brown. Thanks for hav­ing me along!