Author: Joanna

More food reviews that you can stomach

So y’all asked for more food reviews with pics, so today I am going to do short reviews of the fol­low­ing places:

1. The Ambeli
2. The Grill at the Dux­ton
3. Lager­field as a func­tion ven­ue
4. St John’s Res­taur­ant

I hope you don’t mind that I’ve put them all in one post.

Eat and eat and eat: win a voucher for the Occidental

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Richard who you will find hid­ing away at Munchen Bur­ger get­ting his borsct on. This week we’ve got our last prize to give away, thanks to cel­eb­rate Wel­ling­ton on a Plate, thanks to the lovely Pos­it­ively Wel­ling­ton Tour­ism, we have a $100 vouch­er to The Occi­dent­al to give away.

New Zealand’s Next Top City

Writ­ing recaps of New Zeal­and’s Next Top Mod­el is some­thing that I’d nor­mally do over at Pretty Pretty Pretty, but since the first epis­ode of Sea­son Two was filmed in Wel­ling­ton (nice work, Pos­it­ively Tour­ism!), I thought I might put up some thoughts on all the places that they shot.

• The girls stay at
  The Museum Hotel, which one girl describes as “pristine”, while anoth­er expresses sur­prise that they’re not stay­ing in a back­pack­ers’ to save money. It’s cute that she knows about budgets, and hope­fully she’ll learn about product place­ment soon­er rather than later. The Museum Hotel is indeed a gor­geous space, and the bathtubs are so big that you could prob­ably fit all 13 girls in at once. There is in fact a clip of them all sit­ting in a spa later but I could­n’t fig­ure out if it was at th hotel or out at Boom­rock.
• For their first cat­walk exper­i­ence, the girls are charged with stomp­ing around the Water Whirler – which we’d already read about on Stuff. It was reas­sur­ing to see how bad most of the girls were at walk­ing in heels, but a warn­ing: if you’re think­ing about try­ing to recre­ate this scene, secur­ity guards will have a very dif­fer­ent idea about what ‘fierce’ is. You are not allowed on the Water Whirler.
• Because every tour­ist ven­ture needs a mont­age, we get to see the girls with Solace in the Wind (a less polite per­son than me would com­ment on how Mr Solace appears to be more anim­ated – and artic­u­late – than some of them) and get­ting excited about shop­ping in the Old Bank Arcade.
  

Set your brain on fire with Ignite

So many present­a­tions are like really really weak broth, with only a hint of actu­al con­tent float­ing around in far too much weak sauce. If only we could turn up the heat on that soup and sim­mer it down to a con­cen­trated jus burst­ing with fla­vour and taste. Would­n’t that be awe­some? No filler, just killer! That’s what the Ignite series of talks aims to do: 

Have you ever been to a 60-minute talk and lamen­ted that there was only five minutes of good con­tent?  Ima­gine if you could hear only that five minutes…

that’s Ignite Wel­ling­ton!

Come along to the second Ignite Wel­ling­ton and be inspired, amused, edu­cated and amazed!  We have an array of tal­en­ted Wel­ling­ton speak­ers, who will each speak for five minutes on top­ics that range from couch­surf­ing and Ern­est Ruther­ford, to Out­doorKnit, wall­pa­per and build­ing the dream!

At the heart of Ignite is its fast-paced format.  All presenters must give their talks in just five minutes – using 20 slides that appear on screen for only 15 seconds.

The even­ing will start with an Ignite Con­test, which will help par­ti­cipants unleash their inner cre­ativ­ity.  The last event had teams build­ing the tallest pos­sible struc­tures out of spa­ghetti and marsh­mal­lows

Ignite is hap­pen­ing on Tues­day August 3, at the Para­mount Theatre from 6.30pm-10pm. Ignite is free, but you need to register in order to guar­an­tee a seat. For more inform­a­tion, includ­ing the full list of speak­ers, check out their site. You can fol­low also them at @ignitewelli and become a Face­book fan

Eat and eat and eat: win a voucher for the General Practitioner

 Con­grat­u­la­tions to Nicole and her fan­tail for win­ning our Rata com­pet­i­tion. This week, to cel­eb­rate Wel­ling­ton on a Plate, thanks to the lovely Pos­it­ively Wel­ling­ton Tour­ism, we have a $100 vouch­er to the Gen­er­al Prac­ti­tion­er on the corner of Wil­lis & Boul­cott to give away.

The res­taur­ant gets its name from the build­ing’s ori­gin­al pur­posee – it was con­struc­ted for Dr. Henry Pol­len in 1902, with his fam­ily liv­ing on the top floor and sur­gery on the bot­tom. Legend (or just hearsay?) has it that not too long after that moved in a troop of ladies to take care of oth­er needs of the body besides medi­cine, before even­tu­ally it was refur­bished as a posh res­taur­ant we once took my grand­moth­er to, but I can­’t remem­ber the name of it.

So, speak­ing of stick­ing things in buns, part of Wel­ling­ton on a Plate is Bur­ger Wel­ling­ton, in which over 30 Wel­ling­ton res­taur­ants and cafes are cre­at­ing spe­cial bur­gers and you get to vote for the win­ner. The Gen­er­al Prac­ti­tion­er­’s con­tri­bu­tion sounds espe­cially good:

Band Substances

An unfor­tu­nate num­ber of Wel­ling­tonis­tas are rather fond of mak­ing rather ter­rible puns quite fre­quently, which means a lot of my time is spend mak­ing “Badoom chish!” sounds. Ima­gine how much cool­er it would be if the jokes were bet­ter and instead of me, there was a whole damn band play­ing the rim shots. Wait, you don’t want to have to ima­gine it? You want it to be real? Well, have we got the gig for you then!

Remem­ber TAWA-nom­in­ated Rob­bie Ellis and the bus lane you put through his heart? Well, he’s been work­ing on a new show called Band Sub­stances:

It’s music­al stand-up com­edy with a full band!

Join some of Wel­ling­ton’s favour­ite music­al comedi­ans:

• Gab­ri­el Page
• Sarah Harpur
• Carlo & Cyn­thia Wake­field from Young and the Wit­less IV
• The Fringe Bar Opera Soloists and more!

It’ll be Band to the Bone! (Jo’s note: BADOOM CHISH!)

The show has with Jerome Chandra­hasen as MC and Rob­bie as music­al dir­ect­or.

Rebels in so many ways

 Remem­ber the good time y’all had last year at the TAWAs? Sure, a lot of that was us up on stage, but also, it was the Klezmer Rebs, play­ing rol­lick­ingly good tunes. So we ima­gine you’d like to see them again, yes?

Good news, friends! They’re play­ing a gig next Fri­day July 30th at the Bath House, with Rodrigo Bros, The Char­coal White, Sam Man­zanza Africa Rhythm Band, Rose’, Rus­sell Self, Han­nah Howes, oSka and more yet to con­firm. The gig is to raise money for the Sea Shep­pard and Pete Beth­une. 

Come out and show your sup­port for oppos­i­tion to whal­ing.  All bands are donat­ing their ser­vices and all pro­ceeds go to the Sea Shep­herd Soci­ety to help them con­tin­ue their dir­ect action against whalers in our oceans.

Yes, there are divided opin­ions on the Sea Shep­par­d’s tech­niques and Pete Beth­une in par­tic­u­lar. What’s not up for debate? How much fun it is to have a jolly good dance.