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.