A true brew

For those who love cold cof­fee on a hot day (final­ly!) or just want to have a bot­tle of decent caf­feine on hand for those days when you can’t get out for a cof­fee, barista Akle­sha has opened a small True Brew cof­fee bar up in the Grand Arcade doing sin­gle ori­gin ‘man­u­al brew­ing’ (no […]

Xmas pud, boozy black forest.…and a very Merry Xmas!

Mmm­mm xmas.  Hol­i­days.  Sum­mer sun (we live in hope).  And gela­to. Gra­ham Joe at Gelis­si­mo has it all sort­ed. Small batch, hand craft­ed gelatos using Zany Zeus organ­ic milk and real sea­son­al ingre­di­ents.  Watch out for Gelis­si­mo gelatos on menus around town where Gra­ham and var­i­ous chefs (Sco­pa for exam­ple) have col­lab­o­rat­ed to cre­ate a […]

Open for the holidays?

As a town of pub­lic ser­vants, it seems like much of Welling­ton shuts down for a month from Christ­mas until Anniver­sary Day. Peo­ple deserve hol­i­days, sure, but if they have the mis­for­tune of being back at work in the sum­mer, they got­ta be able to get cof­fee, right? We’re com­pil­ing a list of bar/cafe/restaurant hol­i­days […]

Hot buttered coconut

Have you got your christ­mas nog on yet? Hot but­tered coconut cock­­­tail-in-a-mug from the beau­ti­ful peo­ple at The Hangar.  A pret­ty del­ish way to cel­e­brate the sea­son. The WellingtonNZ.com advent cal­en­dar has all sorts of good­ies on offer, many in the food and drink are­na. Some oth­er exam­ples: Zibib­bo half price tapas in the bar […]

Baghrir and Maamol

So this week I’m extend­ing my Mediter­ranean food knowl­edge, cour­tesy of Lazeeza (Ara­bic for deli­cious) on Dixon Street in the for­mer Sim­ply Paris premis­es (beside Dixon Street Deli). Turk­ish, Lebanese, Greek and North African offer­ings, to name but a few. The cab­i­net food was edu­ca­tion­al and the brunch menu offered a few dif­fer­ent twists (brioche french […]

More new stuff…

It must be spring. Some new places to tempt your palate: Bureau (the for­mer Liq­ui­date folks) at 120 The Ter­race.  The quin­tes­sen­tial wine and tapas bar with excel­lent food and ser­vice (would we expect any­thing less?) – a selec­tion of tasty tapas and a few mains and black­board desserts (slow roast­ed tangy pork cro­quettes with […]

Zesty success

So I’m going to declare right up front that I work for Zest Food Tours of New Zealand before I con­grat­u­late them on 10 years of suc­cess this month.  No mean feat in the some­­times-fick­­le tourism/hospitality indus­try. And rat­ed one of the world’s top 10 Walk­ing Tours for Glo­be­trot­ting Food­ies by Lone­ly Plan­et this year. […]

Coffee for John Key and America’s Cup fans

Tonight we went to the open­ing of the Nespres­so “bou­tique” on Lambton Quay, because frankly, we’d go to the open­ing of envelopes if they involved Louis Roed­er­er cham­pagne(1) (although a num­ber of peo­ple we know turned down the invi­ta­tion, sent us links to a Buz­zfeed arti­cle about dis­pos­able pods and then com­mis­sioned haikus) and it was […]

Wine-o-clock

It seems its wine-o-clock time again. Grey­town, Mar­t­in­bor­ough and Glad­stone are wak­ing up from win­ter and prepar­ing for Toast Mar­t­in­bor­ough next week­end.  The tick­ets are all sold for this year oth­er than some pack­ages with Rydges if you’re super keen (bear in mind that does mean a sloshy old bus ride over that hill and […]

Another birthday, black pudding hotdogs, and 2:1 steak

The birth­day first.  Since I seem to be on a birth­day roll late­ly. Ti Kou­ka cel­e­brat­ed their 3rd birth­day on Fri­day just gone (well done guys). Even though I couldn’t make lunch with free bub­bles, I did man­age to grab deli­cious car­rot cake for after­noon tea (pure­ly for cel­e­bra­to­ry pur­pos­es you under­stand), and con­firm their […]