Mojo Origins

We can’t help feel­ing a lit­tle bit pleased that one of the Star­bucks on Lambton Quay has closed, and been replaced by a shiny new Mojo: This is the new Mojo Ori­gins, out the front of Lambton Square, behind a schist facade that some years ago had been put togeth­er for an ear­li­er ten­ant, Rodd […]

The carrots! They are mobbing!

Con­scious Con­sumers is organ­is­ing New Zealand’s first Car­rot­mob.The basic idea of a Car­rot­mob is to organ­ise con­sumers to shop at a par­tic­u­lar busi­ness, if that busi­ness pledges to use the mon­ey to adopt more envi­ron­men­tal­ly and social­ly respon­si­ble prac­tices.  The busi­ness that wins the ‘mob’ of con­sumers is the one that pledges to use the […]

A Cuba St cafe that’s not a cafe in Cuba St

Last week I was in sun­ny Napi­er, idly strolling down Dal­ton Street, when I came across this curi­ous cafe. Yes, it’s a cafe themed after a ’00s-era Welling­­ton-style cafe. Named after our cen­tral cafe dis­trict, Cuba St cafe serves Welling­ton brands Havana cof­fee and t leaf T tea, and I was tick­led to hear bar­be­cue […]

Smells like year-old fish and rotten eggs. But awesome!

Has it real­ly been a year since Fish­head mag­a­zine launched? Appar­ent­ly so! Con­se­quent­ly, they’d like to par­ty with you! There’s be cock­tail spe­cials, free entry and Welling­ton super­group The Eggs play­ing. Fish­head birth­day after­par­ty Thurs­day March 31, 9pm-mid­night CQ Bar in the Qual­i­ty Hotel, 223 Cuba Street. Last one in’s a rot­ten…

A lake of laksa

As it’s get­ting cold­er, and we’re get­ting colds, the minds of the Welling­ton­ista turn towards hot, spicy sat­is­fac­tion. For some of us (well, at least me), this means lak­sa. But where on earth in Welling­ton can we find Malaysian food??? What’s that you say, on every sec­ond block? Okay, fine. But not all lak­sas are […]

Craft Beer for Japan

To raise funds in the wake of the diaster in Japan, Hashigo Zake is hold­ing a tast­ing of Japan­ese craft beer on Thurs­day 24th March at 6:30pm. All pro­ceeds will be donat­ed to the Japan­ese Red Cross. The tast­ing will fea­ture Tokyo beer writer Rei Muraka­mi, who will be bring­ing beer from brew­eries Baeren and […]

Steak frites: does what it says on the box

If you’re after a clas­sic and hearty meal, then we hearti­ly rec­om­mend you hoof it to Le Met­ro­pol­i­tan on Cuba Street. In fact, we sug­gest you go there on Mon­day March 14 espe­cial­ly when they’re hav­ing a fundrais­er for Christchurch. How about I tell you about the din­ner I had there recent­ly in order to […]

Offbeat is back!

The Off­beat Orig­i­nals sto­ry has a hap­py end­ing it seems — they are open for busi­ness, since Tues­day even. We can report that the fish­burg­ers are just as they always were. Pre­vi­ous­ly: What hap­pened? Most missed Signs of life And the orig­i­nal Welling­ton­ista Off­beat review

Offbeat is on

When Off­beat Orig­i­nals mys­te­ri­ous­ly and sud­den­ly closed last year, we were ter­ri­bly update. Back in Octo­ber, a sign sad­ly advised that the joint was “closed until fur­ther notice”. We did­n’t hold out much hope, nom­i­nat­ing Off­beat in the Most Missed cat­e­go­ry at the TAWAs. But today Wellingo­nista Tom spot­ted this new sign: Reopen­ing Feb­ru­ary? Yay! […]

Wishbone blows, harder

In case kin­da nasty and over-priced food, and rumoured work­er exploita­tion weren’t rea­son enough to dis­like the (sur­pris­ing­­ly-suc­cess­­ful) Wish­bone, how about this for some odi­ous sen­ti­ment: