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!