If you’re going to splash out a large amount of mon­ey for a din­ner for a spe­cial occa­sion or because you’re worth it, the whole expe­ri­ence had bet­ter be pret­ty damn spec­tac­u­lar. The food must be deli­cious, the ser­vice must be amaz­ing, and the atmos­phere should be grand. The fol­low­ing restau­rants can all deliv­er sub­lime times, but which one is very best of all?

I spent all my rent mon­ey on din­ner here, but at least when the bailiffs beat me to death I will die bliss­ful­ly:

Splurges after the jump…

A. Martin Bosley’s

The best fine-din­ing restau­rant in the coun­try, accord­ing to Cui­sine, and it’s hard to argue. If you’re after some­thing approach­ing the mol­e­c­u­lar gas­tron­o­my of Fer­ran Adria or Hes­ton Blu­men­thal (all foams, dusts and porcini/chocolate com­bi­na­tions) then this might be the clos­est you’ll get in Welling­ton. It helps to like seafood, but you can always blow $80 on Wagyu beef if you’re that way inclined.%

B. Trade Kitchen

trade
A thor­ough­ly impres­sive debut in a brand-new site far from the tra­di­tion­al din­ing and nightlife areas. Their sparkling mod­ern decor (giant Tom Dixon lights and Richard Killeen graph­ics) is a nice depar­ture from tra­di­tion, and their will­ing­ness to mix dif­fer­ent cuts of meat in a sin­gle dish (such as beef fil­let with ox cheek tart and mar­row beignet) speaks of an abil­i­ty to mix sub­tle inno­va­tion with immac­u­late tech­nique, at an impres­sive price.

WINNER!!!
C. Matterhorn

Not real­ly “faine dain­ing” in the tra­di­tion­al sense, but damned close and often with an invig­o­rat­ing­ly orig­i­nal approach to ingre­di­ents. World-class chefs such as Rex Mor­gan and Nick Huff­man have left their marks on the menu, and for­mer sig­na­ture dish­es such as mut­ton­bird and pikopiko risot­to and truf­fled cham­pagne and pota­to soup are remem­bered with fond­ness. Week­ends are rau­cous, and more suit­ed to snack­ing on bowls while knock­ing back the cock­tails, but come for din­ner mid-week and you’ll expe­ri­ence a top-end din­ing expe­ri­ence with­out the top-end price.

D. Citron

A won­der­ful­ly inti­mate set­ting for deca­dent and deli­cious meals. Splash out, go for the degus­ta­tion menu, let the knowl­edge­able and charm­ing som­me­liers choose your wine, and get set for an unfor­get­table jour­ney into cui­sine.

E: Capitol

Capi­tol is a small restau­rant, and its kitchen is so famous­ly tiny it’s fre­quent­ly com­pared to a ship’s gal­ley, and yet some­how they man­age to turn out the most deli­cious food. We think that their secret is by using the best ingre­di­ants and keep­ing things real­ly sim­ple, but we haven’t man­aged to fig­ure out how they man­age to keep their bath­rooms smelling so deli­cious (exact­ly, when’s the last time you actu­al­ly looked for­ward to smelling a bath­room?). Capi­tol’s staff have mas­tered the art of friend­ly but smooth­ly pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice (just ask Gan­dalf), and as well as an exten­sive range of apperetiffs and diges­tives, their small wine list offers some real­ly love­ly choic­es. If you ever get the chance to attend a Wine­mak­er’s Night, where they match a set menu with wines from a par­tic­u­lar vine­yard, you should rush at it (Four exquis­ite cours­es matched with Serisen wines for $85? Hell yes!).

To spend some seri­ous cash at these places, look for them on Zoomin under “bestuncheap”.