WOP: Give me shelter

So, Welling­ton on a Plate — it’s quite good, yeah? While Joan­na is a (deli­cious­ly) sea­soned pro, this is my first year sam­pling the culi­nary delights of the fes­ti­val of nomz. So I fig­ured I should share my find­ings. Here are my first two expe­ri­ences — Mar­tin Bosley’s and Fox­glove.

Martin Bosley’s

While Mar­tin Bosley’s has a Welling­ton on a Plate menu (two cours­es plus wine for $45), the Boz is also par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Burg­er Welling­ton com­pe­ti­tion with a cre­ation is called the Crab Shack Stack. It strange­ly remind­ed me of the Krab­by Pat­ty burg­er from Sponge­Bob SquarePants, which is one of the rea­sons I chose it.

Now, the restau­rant isn’t huge and it did­n’t seem full, yet we wait­ed almost an hour for our meals to arrive. Ear­ly on we were brought some nice bread rolls with whipped but­ter and sea salt. Then a bit lat­er we were brought an amuse-bouche of a salmon-based sal­ad and as a way of say­ing “Soz for the late­ness of your mains, guys.” But that stage I was so hun­gry, the wee sal­ad actu­al­ly got my stom­ach into action and made me feel even more hun­gry.

Final­ly my Crab Shack Stack arrived. It’s made up of a fish cake, avo­ca­do, bacon and toma­to, and served on “hand-cut cheesy fries” with “Mar­ty’s bull­dog sauce”.

The burg­er was good, but with the eter­nal fan­cy-burg­er dilem­ma — hands or cut­lery? I should have eat­en it with my hands — it would have been so much eas­i­er — but as Mar­tin Bosley’s is such a classy joint, I felt oblig­ed to (awk­ward­ly) knife-and-fork it.

I’m not too sure about the inclu­sion of bacon in the burg­er. While it was excel­lent bacon, it just seemed a lit­tle over­pow­er­ing. As Mar­tin Bosley’s is known for excel­lence in seafood, I’d have pref­ered the fish cake to have car­ried the burg­er on its own.

The fries were good, but it did­n’t quite work hav­ing the burg­er served on top of the fries. They end­ed up get­ting a lit­tle mushed, which made me sad. I like good hearty chips, and these ones were a lit­tle too thin to hold much heat.

But Mar­tin Bosley’s is in an amaz­ing loca­tion. We had a spec­tac­u­lar view of parts of Welling­ton unusu­al­ly cov­ered in snow, and saw the dra­mat­ic weath­er sweep in and out of the har­bour.

And as a bonus, we were seat­ed at the spe­cial table designed by artist Simon Ogden. Its top is cre­atived from old linoleum pieces, cut into inter­lock­ing shapes, and that was almost enough to take my mind off the wait.

Foxglove

Anoth­er har­bour­side restau­rant, Fox­glove’s Welling­ton on a Plate menu (slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the one list­ed on the fes­ti­val web­site) has a choice of three entrees and three mains, each course served with a matched glass of wine, all for $35.

But first, the bread. It was a nice hot sour­dough roll, served with an amaz­ing herbed marscapone and a love­ly fruity olive oil. By the way — do y’all break your bread roll or do you cut it with a knife? I used to be a cut­ter (#emo), but now I’m a break­er. Cut­ting seems to squash the break, and break­ing feels all Euro­pean.

For my entree, I chose the cau­li­flower and gor­gonzo­la risot­to with “tem­pu­ra cel­ery heart” and “truf­fle pota­to foam”. You know how vile and cold the weath­er has been late­ly? Well, this was the com­plete oppo­site of that. It was love­ly and warm and cheesy, and it just made all thoughts of rain, hail and thun­der melt away.

I had a wee taste of one of the oth­er entree options — steak tartare. I’ve always been a lit­tle afraid of this (raw mince!), but it was good qual­i­ty steak, and the foie gras added to its palata­bil­i­ty.

And then for my main course, I had grilled grop­er, served with a clam sauce and a lit­tle sal­ad. The fish was per­fect­ly cooked, nice and moist, and was­n’t over­shad­owed by the accom­pa­ni­ments. It was kind of small, but cou­pled with the entree, I was left pleas­ant­ly full — the right kind of full­ness for a lunch. I mean, you want to be able to get some work done in the after­noon.

Like­wise, the two glass­es of wine served were both well matched with the mains*, but weren’t enough to send one into a dozy after­noon slump. Though per­haps that was also ward­ed off by the 70% dark choco­late truf­fles we fin­ished with.

I was real­ly impressed with Fox­glove’s Welling­ton on a Plate menu. It’s good val­ue and is worth explor­ing.

* I lit­er­al­ly know noth­ing about wine-match­ing so this might be a com­plete lie.