Category: Wellingtonista

Flying in and switching off

The Oaks com­plex some­times seems like a hos­pit­al­ity Ber­muda Tri­angle: fast-food joints and dodgy con­veni­ence stores jostle with bars of almost unre­lent­ing crap­ness. But something’s about to land that looks much more prom­ising: Mem­ph­is Belle Cof­fee House.

With a barista who just came second in the region­al champs, a ser­i­ous-look­ing range of Flight beans from their Napi­er home base and glimpses of an interi­or that looks vastly more soph­ist­ic­ated than its pre­de­cessor (not that that’s say­ing much), Mem­ph­is Belle might just put the Oaks curse behind it. It should be open­ing this week, and def­in­itely seems worth check­ing out.

On the oth­er hand, it looks like it might be lights out for a bar that was nev­er exactly this fly’s favour­ite place: Elec­tric Aven­ue. There was a skip out­side this week­end, gradu­ally filling with neon-painted MDF as the gaudy interi­ors were ripped out. It’s quite pos­sible that it’s just a par­tic­u­larly viol­ent renov­a­tion, but it all seems rather sud­den, and their Face­book group has been silent for a month. Is there any­one out there who will admit to being a reg­u­lar and can con­firm or refute its demise? And what are the chances of get­ting a decent bar to replace it? Giv­en the loc­a­tion in Munter Cent­ral, I guess the most we could hope for is a bar that can at least spell its street address on its web­site.

Play Four Square in Wellington!

Foursquare has arrived in Wel­ling­ton – and we’re one of the first Aus­tralasi­an cit­ies to be included!

But, you say, “I thought Four Square was a chain of over-sized dair­ies with a charm­ingly retro Dick Frizzell logo!” To which we’d say, “Ho ho, you cheeky post-iron­ic urb­an­ites, we mean Foursquare, the loc­a­tion-based social net­work­ing game that’s tak­ing the world by storm!”

You may remem­ber back in Septem­ber we wrote about Twit­ter­places, which rather sadly shut up shop almost imme­di­ately there­after. Well, Foursquare was the inspir­a­tion for Twit­ter­places: when you go to a new place; a bar, res­taur­ant, park, any­thing, you “check-in”; and then you can see who of your friends are there.

And that’s just the begin­ning. There’s an over­view of it all here, but here’s the basics.

You can leave tips for things to do at each place, or add oth­er people’s tips to your list; you earn points for check-ins out­side work hours, and you can earn badges for vari­ous “achieve­ments”, like the Bend­er badge (when you are out for four nights in a row), or the Gym Rat badge (when you are a reg­u­lar at places tagged as a “Gym”).

And: you can become May­or of a spot by being the per­son check­ing-in most often in the last 60 days (though per­haps one should exer­cise dis­cre­tion as to where one checks-in if one does­n’t want to become May­or of a super­mar­ket or shop­ping centre, like <coff> some of our readers—whom we are too polite to name).

One of the nice things that’s happened in oth­er cit­ies is that May­ors are often rewar­ded by the pro­pri­et­ors of their places – and that’s what’s happened here already at Mojo Old Bank, where Matt will stand a free cof­fee to the newly crowned May­or. We can think of a few oth­er places that we’d like to see extend­ing this sort of cour­tesy! (Espe­cially the ones we go to often.)

Foursquare depends on hav­ing some sort of inter­net cap­able mobile device: there’s a mobile web ver­sion, as well as the inev­it­able iPhone and Android apps – and by design these are the only ways you can do check-ins.

So sign up, get out there, and see if you can unseat Pablo G. from the top of the Wel­ling­ton Lead­er­board!

Eating our way through the recession

Remem­ber a few months ago, when doom and gloom dom­in­ated the hospo news? Well, there cer­tainly have been a lot of clos­ures in cent­ral Wel­ling­ton, but many of those places have re-opened, and we’ve even got a few brand-new bars and res­taur­ants to cel­eb­rate.

Here’s a list of rein­carn­a­tions:

• Vin­tage → Hashigo Zake
• Calypso → Elixir
• Epic → Rhythm
• Chow Cab­aret → The Lib­rary
• Para­diso → Betty’s (I insist on the apo­strophe)
• State Opera House Espresso Bar → Pol­lux

Some brand-new places:

• Por­tofino (at Kumutoto)
• Red Ginger (under­neath Hawthorn Lounge)
• Lychee (in the wil­der­ness of Arthur St)

A couple of rumoured upcom­ing open­ings:

• “Cuba” (repla­cing Zeal in Gar­rett St)
• Yet anoth­er Irish pub, repla­cing New Orleans in Allen St

That leaves a hand­ful of recent fail­ures yet to be revived:

• Herd St Bras­ser­ie
• Sub­way at Chaf­fers Dock
• Emporio in Chews Lane

If any­thing, the industry looks to be health­i­er than a few months ago, and a few of the new places (Pol­lux, Hashigo Zake and The Lib­rary in par­tic­u­lar) are among our new favour­ites. If this means that con­sumers have stopped spend­ing on Plasma TVs while still din­ing out, then I applaud their good taste. Of course, it could mean that we’re all com­mit­ting kuidaore (a Japan­ese term roughly mean­ing “to ruin one­self through extra­vag­ance in food”). But what a lovely way to go.

Enigmatic

Die-hard Espresso­hol­ic fans seem to be happy that it will con­tin­ue in a new loc­a­tion, tak­ing over from Dorothy’s Patis­ser­ie in Cuba St. There are still grumblings about its pre­vi­ous loc­a­tion being taken over by “anoth­er godaw­ful Cour­tenay Place bar”, but there are signs that its replace­ment, “Enigma”, might not be anoth­er Shoot­ers or Elec­tric Aven­ue. For a start, the sign in the win­dow describes it as a “café/bar”, and the paint­ing going on inside seems to have a sim­il­ar graf­fiti theme to the old place. Some have even said that there are links to the old Espresso­hol­ic man­age­ment, so per­haps some of whatever it was that people saw in the place will remain, for bet­ter or worse. But are we to expect a soundtrack of Gregori­an chants and shak­uha­chi samples?

There are plenty of oth­er changes going on in the bar and café world, and it’s not all doom & gloom. I’ll keep you in on the gos­sip after the jump.

Don’t need to be Koi, Roy…

…but Koi looks like it’s not too far away as the replace­ment for Copita, with logos all over the awn­ing already. The food sounds quite inter­est­ing, but it will mainly be bar snacks, with the emphas­is a bit more on drink­ing than in its illus­tri­ous fine-din­ing pre­de­cessor.

As my col­leagues men­tioned, I’ve been busily tweet­ing away, but for those not fol­low­ing the tweets, here’s a sum­mary of recent news, gos­sip and spec­u­la­tion, plus a few oth­er morsels…