Getting social while someone else does the cooking

On Mon­day night, some of the Welling­ton­ista went along to the launch of Social Cook­ing, a new cook­ing school based in Herd Street, so this fly tagged along too, buzzing over­head. The launch was held inside the City Mar­ket space, not actu­al­ly in the class­room itself, where stands were set up by var­i­ous pur­vey­ors to […]

The power of Voodoo (who do?)

When we talked about the Rap­ture, we men­tioned Voodoo Restau­rant on Man­ners Street in brief, but that real­ly was­n’t enough. See­ing it’s got the Grabone treat­ment today (hur­ry! Only three hours left!), we do need to tell you just how damn deli­cious Voodoo is. In the wacked out Dis­ney­land atmos­phere of the old Harem, Voodoo is try­ing […]

Wellington on a delicious plate

It has been a cou­ple of weeks now since the launch of the Visa Welling­ton on a Plate pro­gramme, and we have been very remiss in not telling you about it. Your cred­it card, how­ev­er, will thank us, as many of the events are now sold out. The launch was held in Mojo’s roast­ing premis­es […]

cuckoo for caffeine

You may be wan­der­ing along the water­front lat­er in the year when a crowd of large gen­tle­men in colour­ful cot­ton knit shirts may ask for direc­tions to some­thing called the “RWC Par­ty Zone”. And there­fore, as a polite host want­i­ng only the best for guests to our city, you may direct them to Cuck­oo, this […]

Food Show, Glorious Food Show

You don’t have to buy us break­fast to wax lyri­cal about the Food Show, but they did any­way. The Food Show launch break­fast at Hip­popota­mus was so deli­cious that it has made me deter­mined that the next time I get to stay overnight in the Muse­um Hotel, I must do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary in order […]

Welcome to May-lasia

As well as car­ry­ing out all my usu­al duties as Empress of the Inter­net and Edi­tor of the Welling­ton­ista, I’ve also been doing reviews of local Malaysian restau­rants for Malaysia Kitchen — a glob­al ini­tia­tive that aims to edu­cate and inform con­sumers about Malaysian cui­sine and restau­rants. It’s a hard life, being forced to eat […]

Lamason

There are many many ways to make a decent cup of cof­fee. We are see­ing some of these alter­nate meth­ods return­ing to com­mer­cial use around Welling­ton’s more inter­est­ing cafés: the Swiss Gold; the Chemex; the V60; the cold drip… and the siphon. Dave Lama­son, for­mer­ly Peo­ples Cof­fee’s barista train­er, is pas­sion­ate about the siphon. So […]

La Boca Loca

With the open­ing of The Roxy cin­e­ma, Mira­mar has sud­den­ly become a rather pop­u­lar lit­tle neigh­bour­hood. And now things get even more inter­est­ing with the open­ing of Mex­i­can restau­rant La Boca Loca. It’s a taque­ria — a Mex­i­can fast food joint. But the fast food in ques­tion is cen­tred around a selec­tion of tor­til­la-based dish­es, […]

Jamming culture

Sat­ur­day’s Jamoff at Craft2.0 was a great suc­cess. We were on the spot with this video report. Jams were giv­en marks out of five based on attrib­ut­es of taste, colour, set, orig­i­nal­i­ty and pre­sen­ta­tion. In a field of 24 entries, your cor­re­spon­dent achieved a near per­fect score of 3–3‑3–3‑2 in his aim to pro­duce the […]

The cupboards are bare

The Welling­ton­ista is not just about bring­ing the snark to the deserv­ing. Some­times we drop the cyn­i­cal worn-out hip­ster thing to bring food to the deserv­ing. We need to tell you that the Down­town Com­mu­ni­ty Min­istry food bank is just about out of food. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, more peo­ple need their help than ever before. Yes­ter­day their […]