Author: Joanna

Roxy: with pizzazz but no storming…

We’ve reviewed Roxy before, but hav­ing had the expe­ri­ence of being the only peo­ple din­ing there at 7.30pm on a Thurs­day night, we thought it was pret­ty impor­tant that we review them again. Espe­cial­ly since we saw that now (like many oth­er places we real­ly should round up) they’re offer­ing BYO on Mon­days and Tues­days.

First up, I should say that my opin­ion of their break­fast has changed con­sid­er­ably since I left that last com­ment. I’ve been there for break­fast many times with the brunch club, and they’re always deli­cious, quick with the cof­fee which is sore­ly need­ed on Sat­ur­day morn­ings, and oh my stars, those hash browns — wow. In fact, they were nom­i­nat­ed for Best Break­fast in the 2007 AWAs.

Something to mull over

Hav­ing observed a steam­ing hot urn of it at the South­ern Cross on Sat­ur­day night, sur­round­ed by blan­kets and hot water bot­tles, we want to know: where can one get the best mulled wine in Welling­ton, how much will we have to pay for it, and approx­i­mate­ly what alco­holic per­cent­age will it be? 

Do our work for us in the com­ments sec­tion. Thanks!

A diamond in the rough

What are you doing on Sat­ur­day? How about you go on a trea­sure hunt to find me* your­self a dia­mond ring? iChild on twit­ter explains it:

So, what’s this all about then?? Sto­ry goes, guy bought ring for girl, girl did­n’t want ring. Guy could­n’t give it to anoth­er, and does­n’t want to sell it. Guy also hap­pens to be the guy behind Donoogle.com …Guy decides that rather than just hav­ing this ring sit­ting around, he would cre­ate a trea­sure hunt around Welling­ton to give away said ring and use it at the same time to pro­mote this choice web­site which every­one should use!

So if you want to par­tic­i­pate, you should start fol­low­ing donoogle_com. It does seem a lit­tle bit astro­turfy to my eyes, but hey, trea­sure hunts are always fun. Espe­cial­ly if you do it dressed up as a pirate. Or a pan­da.

*(Although I must state for the record that I would rather have a sin­gle dia­mond on my ring, and I’d like it to be aprox­i­mate­ly the size of my fist, thanks.) 

Restoring our faith in humanity one step at a time

This morn­ing-ish, I was jug­gling head­phones, iPod, scarf, hat, satchel and extra bag on the bus, as well as try­ing to text, and unbe­knownst to me, I man­aged to drop my phone on the bus.

When I got into work, I had a mes­sage on my answer­phone from my mum, say­ing that she’d got a call from some­one who had my cell­phone, and that I should call my num­ber to arrange a pick-up. Right now I’d like to take a moment to say that every­one real­ly should have an ICE (in case of emer­gency) num­ber saved into their phone, it real­ly makes every­thing much more awe­some.

So I called my phone, and a love­ly girl answered, and after a brief freak­out (“You’ve got my phone and you’re in Tarana­ki???? Ooooooh, Tarana­ki STREET!”) I arranged to grab it off her at the rail­way sta­tion this after­noon. I bought some choco­late, and met her, she gave me my phone, I gave her the choco­late, and she told me that this morn­ing get­ting off the train she’d dropped her phone, and some­one had called out to her about it. Yay hap­py kar­ma!

Any­way, my point is, this sto­ry is full of hap­py good­ness. I mean, you can only imag­ine how many top secret Welling­ton­ista secrets and dirty pho­tos that my phone con­tains. I’m so glad I got it back so eas­i­ly, and I hope that you will all con­sid­er doing a good deed tomor­row as well. Wahoo.

Storm in our coffee cups

Now, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but the weath­er late­ly has been some­what less than pleas­ant. Unless you hap­pen to be a wave­watch­er or rather crazy surfer, that is, in which case there have been some rather spec­tac­u­lar things to see. If you’re the kind who’d rather stay inside nice and warm, here’s a fan­tas­tic video that Dave Framp­ton has made to show you what you’re miss­ing

Storm in slow motion from David Framp­ton on Vimeo.

Women are appealing

A book sale worth walking up a hill for

It’s sale time at Vic Books again, both at the Kel­burn Cam­pus and the Pip­itea store by the train sta­tion.

The sale runs from Mon­day May 11-Thurs­day May 28, and if you’re clever you’ll fig­ure out a way to get to the sneak pre­view with wine and nib­bles at the Kel­burn shop, from 3pm, Thurs­day May 7th.

‘Tis the sea­son of twist­ed umbrel­las, so it’s time to stock up on books which will keep you enthralled despite the weath­er. Our famous sale fea­tures fierce­ly dis­count­ed fic­tion, pol­i­tics, his­to­ry, art & archi­tec­ture, sci­ences and cur­rent affairs. Uni­ver­si­ty Press & oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic books, qual­i­ty hard­backs and paper­backs, chil­dren’s books and more.
Dur­ing the sale we will also be hold­ing spe­cial dis­count days:

• Thurs­day May 14th: for one day only, 25% off all chil­dren’s books not already dis­count­ed.
• Thurs­day May 21st: for one day only, 25% off all fic­tion not already dis­count­ed.
• Thurs­day May 28th: for one day only, 25% off all non-fic­tion not already dis­count­ed.

 

Rumbles is ready to rumble with DB

There’s been quite a bit of news around DB Brew­eries try­ing to copy­right the already in use name ‘radler’ late­ly, and one Welling­ton liquor shop — Rum­bles on War­ing-Tay­lor street has had enough.

As seen on the Real Beer page: 

Join us in a boy­cott of DB Brew­ery’s prod­ucts and sup­port NZ Beer…

In response to what we per­ceive to be bul­ly-boy tac­tics and a direct attack on the emerg­ing bou­tique beer indus­try, Rum­bles Wine Mer­chant will not be stock­ing the fol­low­ing prod­ucts brands untl the threat of legal action has been lift­ed. We make no apolo­gies for any incon­ve­nience…

And you can read more about it on the Rum­bles blog. Go Rum­bles! Just read­ing about this makes me thirsty, I could real­ly go for a Ben­net­t’s right about now…

Review: Little India, Cuba Mall

It’s a Tues­day night. Rather, it’s 5.55pm, approx­i­mate­ly. You walk into a restrau­rant that has its ‘OPEN’ sign up. The man behind the counter talk­ing on the phone that gives you a “I am on the phone” look. You nod polite­ly and look around the restau­rant. It is total­ly emp­ty. When he final­ly paus­es his phonecall, he ges­tures you towards the six-seater right in front of the door and dis­ap­pears again, appar­ent­ly to fin­ish off his ter­ri­bly impor­tant phone call. You retrieve a bot­tle of wine from your bag, even though a glass of water first would be nice. The wine is a screw cap, but it takes you a cou­ple of min­utes to crack. No sign of water or menus, so you pull out your copy on NW and start the sudoku, even though you’d real­ly rather order an entree before the rest of your friends arrive because you’re total­ly starv­ing. and the intense heat in the restau­rant and the HI NRG Ban­gra is real­ly real­ly off­putting.

How­ev­er, even though you’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly fast at Sudoku, you man­age to com­plete the entire thing before the wait­er returns with menus for the whole table. You order some samosas, and turn your atten­tion to the small­er cross­word, which you plow through before your lit­tle pas­try parcels show up. The crust of the samosas is not melty, the cab­bage scat­tered on the plate has def­i­nite­ly seen bet­ter days, and the tamarind sauce seems unusu­al­ly con­cen­trat­ed. For $5.50, it is accept­able, but not with that kind of ser­vice.