Graze at the Portlander

A cou­ple of weeks ago I was invit­ed by the love­ly peo­ple at the Port­lander to head in one freez­ing evening, along with a num­ber of Insta­gram­mers, to feast on their new graz­ing con­cept. From our sig­na­ture long bone OP rib-eye pre­sent­ed at your table, to our on the bone grass fed Sir­loin dry aged in house […]

Five questions with Wanda Harland

Full dis­clo­sure: the Welling­ton­ista is all about nepo­tism. So we thought it was about jol­ly time we sat down (well, emailed) our Martha, who has been a very impor­tant part of the ‘ista since like 2006 at least (although she is much less of a bad influ­ence on us now than she used to be), […]

Naked girls. Reading. In Wellington.

In advance of Naked Girls Read­ing; the moth­er­hood edi­tion this Sat­ur­day at the Fringe Bar, I put a few ques­tions to its pro­duc­er, Hugo Grrrl. Okay, first off. Naked girls read­ing — what in the heck is this? And who are you? Naked Girls Read­ing is exact­ly what it sounds like — it’s com­plete­ly naked […]

Saint Fabiola fabulousness

Last Fri­day we had a love­ly time at the open­ing of St Fabi­o­la on Lom­bard Street (you may have seen us tweet­ing about the pies from Pick­le and Pie, because, you know, pri­or­i­ties), so this week, we caught up with the own­er Kirsten for a chat over email. What’s your back­ground before the shop? I’m an […]

My predictions for Wellington on a Plate 2018

Tomor­row is my favourite launch of the year — the Welling­ton on a Plate pro­gramme. In advance, and with­out hav­ing looked at their web­site, here’s what I think it will include (or not) so we can look tomor­row and see if I was right or wrong. There’s always a trend­ing meat (wow is that a […]

Pig & Pinot — we’re as happy as pigs in mud

As you’re no doubt aware from watch­ing Short­land Street, it’s duck-hunt­ing sea­son. Usu­al­ly this means that Cloudy Bay would be doing duck & pinot noir pair­ings around the coun­try, but this year they’ve decid­ed to do some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and pos­si­bly a lit­tle more acces­si­ble — pinot noir & pro­sciut­to — “bring­ing you the […]

Chasing the Black Dog with beer

Last night we went to the open­ing of the new Black Dog brew­ery on Cuba Street, and, spoil­er alert, it was bloody delight­ful. All pics were sup­plied by the pub­li­cist because if you fol­low us on Twit­ter, you’ll know I can’t pho­to­graph for shit. A con­fes­sion: I had nev­er been to the old Black Dog […]

Zoom zoom Zoomy?

We wrote about Uber when they first came to Welling­ton so I’m not here to regur­gi­tate the many cons (though this ‘game’ about the life of an Uber dri­ver is worth a play, sim­i­lar to Action Sta­tion’s Pick A Path). The obvi­ous truth is that for pas­sen­gers, Uber is super con­ve­nient. Now there’s New Zealand-based […]

Review: Kátya Kabanová

Kátya Kabanová was the first opera I ever saw, back in 1996 when it was here for the Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val. I was 16, and we got $5 tick­ets to the dress rehersal through dra­ma class. I was over­whelmed by the music and the draaaaa­ma and the rain on stage and the cliff that rose up on hydraulics […]

In which we solve all traffic problems forever

In pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal tim­ing just before an elec­tion, the Nation­al Par­ty is hand­ing out new roads in an Oprah-like fash­ion. You get a road, and you get a road and YOU get a road. How we’re going to get a cou­ple of bil­lion dol­lars of new roads out of a bud­get full of holes for […]