Category: Waterfront

Eat and eat and eat: win a voucher for Sojourn at the James Cook Grand Chancellor

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Tracey who wants to be burgered sense­less but will also be enjoy­ing a good time at the Gen­er­al Prac­ti­tion­er as well. This week, to cel­eb­rate Wel­ling­ton on a Plate, thanks to the lovely Pos­it­ively Wel­ling­ton Tour­ism, we have a $100 vouch­er to Sojourn Cafe in the James Cook Grand Chan­cel­lor to give away.

It’s true that hotel cafes might not be the first place that springs to mind when you’re think­ing about where to eat, but maybe it’s time to recon­sider. Sojourn’s lunch spe­cial dur­ing Wel­ling­ton on a Plate sounds deli­cious: 

Lunch Offer – $25 set menu

Choose any two courses plus a glass of Wel­ling­ton region­al wine, and a cup of tea or cof­fee

Starter
Smoked sal­mon tim­bale, filled horseradish, cream cheese, olives and artichokes or

Moz­zarella wrapped in zuc­chini over auber­gine galette with a vino cotto reduc­tion

Mains
Char­grilled lamb rump over potato gratin infused by rose­mary, served with chicory and radic­chio or

Poached thresh­er shark laid over a Chardon­nay risotto infused by lem­on pep­per and rus­tic tomato sauce

Yummy cha?

A group of eight of us went to Yum Cha on Sat­urday at Regal, above SMK on Cour­tenay Place, because I had a massive crav­ing for chive pan­cakes. Spoil­er alert: we did­n’t get any chive pan­cakes. In fact, the whole thing was kind of lame.

Although we were pretty near the door to the kit­chen, we were at the end of the food ser­vice, so almost every plate that man­aged to make its way to us was cold. We waited long times between tea refills, and often serv­ers totally skipped us, tak­ing good-look­ing food back into the kit­chen without both­er­ing to offer it to us. My din­ing com­pan­ions sug­ges­ted it was because our table was empty of dishes that they thought we did­n’t want any­thing else. Actu­ally, our table was empty because we wer­en’t offered very much! For a table full of white people, the fried dump­lings that we craved were in very short sup­ply. We begged for roast pork when the table next to us snaffled the last plate (the serv­er ignored our “OMG PLEASE COME HERE!” looks), but were told there was no more. We got on to a second rota­tion of dishes without being full because of the delays between get­ting plates. Only the coconut buns were truly amaz­ing. And there were no chive pan­cakes! That com­bind­ed with Macar­oni-Gate later that night at Monterey (they’d run out of mac’n cheese! OH GOD THE PAIN) was almost enough to make a girl cry.

So, what I want to know is, where should we go next time for Yum Cha, where the food will be served hot, it’ll be plen­ti­ful, there’ll be lots of fried stuff for my Whitey McWhite tastes, and I can get my chive pan­cake on? 

Jam on! Jam off!

As well as tak­ing out the top prize at the ONYAs, appar­ently some of the people at Xero seem to think that they are gods at jam-mak­ing. Sum In Horto dis­agreed, and now a chal­lenge has been laid down. The res­ult?

So, the ‘jam off’ is hap­pen­ing at 11.30am, Tues­day 2 March at the won­der­ful Mojo in the Old Bank Arcade – fol­low them on @mojooldbank

We also have the stun­ningly gor­geous Megan, a Radio NZ journ­al­ist no less, MC’ing the event.

We prom­ise this will be a fun-filled jam-tast­ing ses­sion. See you there!

And now, because I am of the opin­ion that shar­ing an ear­worm gets rid of it, here’s MJ’s ‘Jam’:

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWcaqQKtJk4]

Quality time with the family at Osteria Del Toro

Annoy­ingly, Osteria Del Toro does­n’t appear to have a web­site. How­ever, what they do have is an awe­some altern­at­ive to yum cha on Sundays (and I think it’s only Sunday after­noons) called La Fami­gia.

For $29, you can exper­i­ence their menu high­lights “fam­ily-style”. What this means is that you can help your­self to the lush anti­pasto table, piled high with salads, olives, salami and amaz­ing foc­ca­cia, and then the very nice staff will start bring­ing food to your table, and they won’t stop until you ask them to. You get piz­zas from their wood­fired oven, paella, pasta and roast chick­en with crispy skin. It really is a carb-lov­er­’s para­dise.

One kind of pasta has meat­balls, and the oth­er is pesto, and we got both veget­ari­an and meaty pizza. The paella had both cho­ri­zo and sea­food in it, so it might not be the most cost-effect­ive & wel­com­ing option for veget­ari­ans (and vegans – for­get about it!). We were all people who love us some glu­ten, so we did­n’t ask if it was pos­sible to get their glu­ten-free pizza bases instead, so I can­’t advise you about that. I can, how­ever, assure you that their white wine san­gria made with apricot brandy and ginger beer is a per­fect accom­pani­ment (their PDF menu says it fea­tures a “Make your own Bloody Mary bar” but I did­n’t see that!), and that you prob­ably DON’T need to order churros after­wards, but per­haps you will any­way!

Everyone wants a piece of the pie

 So today the Dom Post has a story about how Ver­boom Badges in Left Bank is in trouble with Mac­Don­alds for using its Geor­gie Pie brand. This story per­plexes me for many reas­ons, but mostly because I’m won­der­ing why the hell any­one would want to bring back Geor­gie Pie in the first place. Aren’t there enough good pies in Wel­ling­ton for you lot already?

Three Fiddy?!

Three bucks fifty to eat lunch at Logan Brown!

 

That got your atten­tion right? Well, the fine print is you have get edu­cated about cli­mate change first and click on a few links, then you will be in the draw to win one of 40 lunches for two (for only three fiddy) at Logan Brown. 

 

Click through to the 350 Aotearoa site to find out how the Wel­ly­wing of 350 Aotearoa is part of a glob­al move­ment push­ing for action on cli­mate change and enter the com­pet­i­tion.  They have under­taken a bunch of stuff since Decem­ber 2008 and are ramp­ing up for an inter­na­tion­al day of cli­mate change action on the 24th of Octo­ber.

 

Wel­ling­ton being Wel­ling­ton it is *the* place to come to make some noise polit­ic­ally and try to dir­ectly influ­ence decision-makers. Some choose the tra­di­tion­al ways with a hikoi, some plac­ards and a loud hail­er; oth­ers use their pur­chas­ing power or womanly charms to push things gently in the dir­ec­tion they would like to see the world go.  A good source of con­tacts and ideas for those inter­ested in sus­tain­ab­il­ity is the social net­work Inter­sect, they have a meet up for Wel­ling­to­ni­ans on the last Tues­day of every month at Mon Ami.  Expect a report back soon from this Wel­ling­ton­isa about what it is like to “Inter­sect” in per­son with these sus­tain­ab­il­ity types.

Cellar-Vate Winermaker’s Dinner: Hunter Wines

There are still some places avail­able for the Feb­ru­ary 18 Cel­lar-Vate winemaker’s din­ner fea­tur­ing the wines from Hunter’s in Marl­bor­ough. You pay $40 and you get to try yummy wine and food matches. Here’s the menu:

Hunter’s Sauvign­on Blanc 2008
On arrival

Hunter’s “Miru-Miru” Brut
Smoked sal­mon canapés on rye with pre­served lem­on and cream cheese spread

Hunter’s “Kaho Roa” winemaker’s selec­tion Sauvign­on Blanc 2006
Chick­en, Medi­ter­ranean veget­ables and cream in filo

Hunter’s Pinot Noir 2006
Medi­um-rare lamb loin on mush­room and sun-dried tomato risotto with pesto oil drizzle

Hunter’s “The Chase” Mer­lot, Pinot Noir, caber­net 2005
Asi­an pork in broth with bok choy and noodles

Hunter’s “Hukapapa” dessert Riesling 2006
Radic­cio, shaved parmes­an and pear salad

If you want to book your­self a place (and we really recom­mend that you do, give Becs a call or flick her an email – becs@cellar-vate.co.nz.