2AWA: Hottest Hospo of the Year

We had a rather heat­ed debate over the Welling­ton­ista email list over the inclu­sion of this cat­e­go­ry in the awards, with one per­son think­ing it was deroga­to­ry and insult­ing. That per­son got told quite stern­ly to “READ THE WIKI ALREADY!” so they could dis­cov­er that the hos­pi­tal­i­ty peo­ple we were pay­ing trib­ute to weren’t being objec­ti­fied mere­ly for their looks, but also for the qual­i­ty of ser­vice that they pro­vide and the way that they con­tribute to the over­all expe­ri­ence of a place. And that’s not objec­ti­fy­ing at all, hon­est…

Can I have a pint…and your phone num­ber, thanks:
Hot­ties (or rather: ‘tal­ent­ed good peo­ple’) are after the jump…

Enzo from Scopa

Every­one in Welling­ton is aware of how hot Enzo is – includ­ing him­self, no doubt, but that does­n’t detract from his appeal. He’s easy on the eye, pas­sion­ate about good food and good ser­vice, remem­bers his reg­u­lars and glad­hands lucky cus­tomers. One of these days he’s going to make some­one a bloody good husband/Civil Union Part­ner (with those fam­i­ly ties, he can no doubt cook, make cof­fee and mix a good cock­tail) and there are plen­ty of Welling­ton­istas who’d glad­ly line up for that priv­iledge.

B. Keyz from Southern Cross Electric Quiz

There’s a rea­son that the Welling­ton­ista put up with the ter­ri­ble ser­vice, chipped glass­es and mediocre food at the South­ern Cross to go to their quiz night every Tues­day, and it’s not just because we keep win­ning bar tabs. Quiz­mas­ter Keyz is always sharply dressed, sharp-tongued and sharp-wit­ted. He lets us argue with him about the right answers, laughs at our jokes and has­n’t yet thrown us out for inap­pro­pri­ate com­ments writ­ten on our answer sheets. He’s not only the mas­ter of the quiz, he’s also the mas­ter of our squeal­ly girly crush­es.

WINNER!!!
C. The staff at Mighty Mighty

The thing about Mighty Mighty is that it’s hard to pick just one per­son as the hottest staff mem­ber. In fact, it’s been debat­ed vig­or­ous­ly all over the toi­let walls in the Ladies’, but so far there is no clear win­ner. All of them go that extra mile with a smile when serv­ing you their tasty cheap wine, or painstak­ing­ly hand-crank­ing the ice crush­ing machine for your cock­tails. There’s the Sallys – both the red­head and the mag­nif­i­cant­ly tat­tooed, the Jap-froed Kohei, and the Baby Hitler-faced Matt so there’s bound to be some­one to suit all tastes.

D. Jonny at Hawthorn

A beau­ti­ful man in a waist­coat with a boun­ti­ful sup­ply of liquor at his hands, who remem­bers your drink pref­er­ences and offers you tastes of things in a sim­i­lar vein to chal­lenge your sens­es. Need we say more?

E. Nicola at Wineseeker

After a red wine to drink with fish’n chips? Ask Nico­la. Want a ries­ling for less than $20 that tastes like it’s from Waipara but is actu­al­ly some­thing dif­fer­ent? Ask Nico­la. In all mat­ters to do with wine, she always knows exact­ly what we want, when we want it, and why. And if sin­gle Welling­ton­istas meet hot peo­ple at the upcom­ing Speed-Wine-tast­ing, we just might have to name our chil­dren after her…

F. Jesse at the Maranui Surf Cafe

Giv­en how insane­ly busy they are, it’s a wise deci­sion on the part of the Maranui Surf Cafe to gen­er­al­ly keep the mous­ta­chioed Jesse behind the counter. If he was out and cir­cu­lat­ing amongst the tables, cus­tomers would sit for hours order­ing more and more as the queues got longer and longer. Instead, they rush to get to the cash reg­is­ter to pay, so they can be smiled at, and have their orders praised (“Choco­late AND straw­ber­ry milk­shake? Genius!”). Every­one likes to be made to feel like they’re smart, espe­cial­ly when the com­pli­menter is so damn cute. It makes the hang­over that much eas­i­er to deal with.

Stalk all these staff using the “hottest hospo” tag on Zoomin.