You may have seen a life­style column in this week­end’s Dom­Post where Hadyn Jones bemoaned the “fact” that you can­’t get milk­shakes at cafés in Wel­ling­ton, and blamed this on the idea that Wel­ling­to­ni­ans are too cool and stuck-up for such things. There are just a few things wrong with this:

  • Just off the top of our little insect brains, we came up with Fidel’s, Mid­night Espresso, Sweet Mother­’s Kit­chen, Espresso­hol­ic, Maranui and Off­beat Ori­gin­als as noted ena­blers for the shake-addicted.
  • Those are hardly obscure, hard-to-find under­ground estab­lish­ments. If the Dom­Post’s esteemed cor­res­pond­ent is not aware of their menus, then one has to ask: just where has he been hanging out?
  • If any­thing, those are the sort of places pre­ferred by the cool kids, so it’s hardly a hip­per-than-thou atti­tude that is keep­ing the oppressed milk­shake down.
  • And finally, if he did hap­pen to ask for a milk­shake in one of the more upmar­ket res­taur­ant-style cafés, then I believe the staff would be quite jus­ti­fied to respond “No, we don’t serve milk­shakes. Neither do we serve lol­li­pops, Rashuns or hot dogs on sticks. We’re a café, not a dairy, bur­ger bar or pro­vin­cial tearooms circa 1983.”

But there’s clearly a nos­tal­gic hanker­ing for gelat­in­ous con­coc­tions of arti­fi­cial fla­vour and indus­tri­al-strength sat­ur­ated fats, giv­en the num­ber of loc­al estab­lish­ments that do serve them. So, please help out the Dom­Post’s con­fused and bemused journ­al­ist by let­ting us know where your favour­ite milk­shakes are: which place has the best shake, the best value and the best range?