More Auckland vs Wellington malarky

Recently menus.co.nz put up a piece called Auck­land is the cap­it­al of cuisine – not Wel­ling­ton, and then asked a num­ber of Wel­ling­ton food blog­gers to respond. The Auck­land inter­net seems to be very short of space, as our response was edited quite heav­ily(*) des­pite stick­ing to the word lim­it (and links changed to pro­mote […]

Joanna had a lot of (Silere) lamb (at Hummingbird)

A couple of weeks ago, I went for din­ner at Hum­ming­bird, and as well as eat­ing fish tacos with my girl­friend (oh grow up!), we ordered the Lamb for Two. What we got was lamb shank with couscous, char­grilled flat­breads, the cream­i­est hum­mus ever, baba gan­oush, some pickles and the most amaz­ingly tender and fla­vour­some […]

Some food-related things that are good right now

We went to Char­lotte, the new steak­house at 201 Cuba Street that is in the house with the checkered past. The ser­vice was very friendly, and the steaks were cooked beau­ti­fully. They are busy because they had a stu­pidly cheap Groupon deal, but it is worth mak­ing a reser­va­tion for, if you are of a […]

The city chocolate fix

Hur­ray, anoth­er guest post from Heath­er at Food­ie Gems of Wel­lie Where to go in the city for a qual­ity chocol­ate fix between usu­al excuses – chocol­ate fest­ivals, Valentines, East­er, Xmas, nation­al chocol­ate day, your birth­day, your best friend’s birth­day, White Day in Japan, Chocol­ate Dipped Fruit and Fon­due day in the US (hmmm, any […]

Three dates for your diary

This is a some­what ran­dom roundup of press releases that caught my eye. Octo­ber 25 (that’s tomor­row) sees Power­tool Records present Bul­leth­oles 4: Explor­ing the Unknown – the New Zea­l­and road­show at Bar Medusa. I don’t actu­ally know any of the bands fea­tur­ing, nor can I testi­fy to how the album sounds, but nine years ago […]

Horseplay

We noticed the oth­er day that Namas­tey in Dix­on St had had a makeover. Most of it involves  over­stuffed couches and smart new table­cloths, but it was the art­works that really stopped us in our bhaji. I’m not really sure what’s going on here. I ima­gine it’s based upon tra­di­tion­al myth­o­logy, but the whole thing […]

Feeling chipper

On top of all the recent open­ings, there are sev­er­al more bars, res­taur­ants, cafés clubs and oth­er new places to look for­ward to in the next few months. One sur­pris­ing and wel­come trend is the re-emer­­­gence of cent­ral city fish and chip shops. An out­fit called Fish n’ Chips on Tory looks (at the time […]

Putting them away with JK: We attend an Event at Tuatara’s new brewery

It’s 9:50am and the glit­ter­ati of Par­a­pa­raumu are itch­ing to get they drank on. Out­side the brand-new Tuatara Brrry (or Brew­ery, as it’s known on paper), they huddle under the awn­ing to escape a rain that nev­er falls, hug­ging the out­er wall of the benighted edi­fice – hop­ing, per­haps, to osmose their way to double-vis­ion. […]

Reasons to be cheerful

Wel­ling­ton may be in the eco­nom­ic doldrums, with some prom­in­ent recent clos­ures in the hos­pit­al­ity sec­tor (some lamen­ted, such as La Met­ro­poli­t­ain; oth­ers less so, such as The Big Kumara), but plenty of new places are open­ing too. Yes­ter­day I slobbered all over Big Bad Wolf, but here’s a quick sum­mary of some oth­er open­ings. […]

ALL of the meat

The time that car­ni­vor­ous Wel­ling­to­ni­ans have been drool­fully anti­cip­at­ing has arrived: Big Bad Wolf has opened in Wake­field St. This is a char­cu­ter­ie with a loc­al twist, as their products incor­por­ate wild game anim­als along with the more famil­i­ar­pork, lamb and beef. Beasts that have giv­en their lives for a high­er pur­pose are vis­ible in […]