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Double Meat Palace

Tem­per­ance Bar might not be doing quite as well as it hoped, because they’re offer­ing 2‑for‑1 mains on Mon­days, Tues­days and Wednes­days in their ads in the Cap­i­tal Times. You can “Choose any menu item of our menu and receive anoth­er of the same or less­er val­ue for free.” Y’hear that? Any menu item of their menu!

Mean­while The Estab­lish­ment clear­ly feels threat­ened because they’ve been run­ning an ad right next to it stat­ing that they offer 2‑for-1s every day but they don’t have any sign of their spe­cial on their annoy­ing music-play­ing site (Seri­ous­ly, who still does that? Is it still 1999? Is Flash still cool?). If their 24 hour liquor license was­n’t enough of a threat to soci­ety, they also offer a 1.2kg steak — which if you can fin­ish with­in 40 min­utes, you dine for free. Yeesh.

If that’s not yet enough meat for you in the meat-mar­ket-dis­trict, Four Kings offers “All you can eat ribs” for $19.95 on Mon­day nights. 

Yikes. I think it’s time we did a review of Pran­nah and maybe High­er Taste. 

Halloween: Wrestling and zombies and dress-ups, oh my!

Next Fri­day is, of course, Hal­loween. And if you’re not trick-or-treat­ing, you’ll need some in-town enter­tain­ment. Oh boy do we have ideas for you!

(Awe­some zom­bie pin-up pic­ture stolen from My Zom­bie Pin-up)

First up, there’s the Hal­loween Howl II wrestling at Welling­ton High School. You already know how much we love the wrestling. Hol­lie, Queen of the Divas, will be there. We’ll be there, dressed up like zom­bies again. Would­n’t you like to come with us?

That’ll be over and done with in time for the Zom­bie Meet-Up at the Para­mount around 10pm. They’ll be screen­ing poo-your­self-scary [REC] at 10.30pm with pro­ceeds going to NZBlood, and then doing a Zom­bie March down Courte­nay Place at 11.45pm.

There’s no word yet on how to tell the dif­fer­ence between the zom­bies and your aver­age Courte­nay Place munter, but just in case you need to here’s a help­ful video from the good folks at Com­mon­Craft.

People’s Empire

New­town may or may not be a bit shit, but their right-on cof­fee com­pa­ny Peo­ple’s Cof­fee (sor­ry, I could­n’t resist adding the apos­tro­phe) cer­tain­ly know their shit. Their pres­ence in cen­tral Welling­ton is expand­ing, and two recent­ly-opened cafés proud­ly stock the Peo­ple’s brand: Meow and Mon Ami.

Meow has tak­en over the space of the for­mer (and much lament­ed) Roti, next to Quoil in Willis St. The decor’s only had a mild makeover, but the retro kitschy kiwiana theme is pret­ty con­sis­tent, with the usu­al Tretchikoffesque prints, orange lamp­shades and ’70s TV aug­ment­ed by some nice chunky crock­ery. I haven’t eat­en there yet, but the brunch menu includ­ed some inter­est­ing vari­a­tions on the stan­dards, such as pinenut & saf­fron scram­bled eggs, cashew & cran­ber­ry ros­ti with halou­mi and rock­et, and all sorts of things with “wild” bacon.

In Bond St, a French café called Mon Ami has also recent­ly opened. It’s inter­est­ing that while many French places in down­town Welling­ton empha­sise the styl­ish urban theme (e.g. Sim­ply Paris, Le Met­ro­pol­i­tain), Mon Ami is full of out­doorsy mag­a­zines, and their web­site goes on about “tramp­ing, sail­ing, kayak­ing, bik­ing, paragly­d­ing”. The decor man­ages to look both rus­tic and ster­ile at the same time, but even if that’s not your thing, dish­es such as rab­bit ter­rine and roque­fort & sul­tana loaf (at rea­son­able lunchtime prices) should be enough to tempt you in.

All stitched up

Rose Marie Salmon, who makes these weird­ly erot­ic and wit­ty “sewing machine draw­ings” using a house­hold sewing machine, has a solo show open­ing this Thurs­day 23 Octo­ber at Daf106 in Aro Val­ley at 6pm. 

A self-taught artist, Rose works as a cos­tume assis­tant on films (most recent­ly Sec­ond Hand Wed­ding) but orig­i­nal­ly stud­ied Organ­ic Hor­ti­cul­ture (?!!). She also has a text mes­sage based series of sewing machine draw­ings which are very cool and will be includ­ed in the exhi­bi­tion. 

Least said, soon­est mend­ed

Rose Marie Salmon 
Daf 109
109 Aro Val­ley
23 Octo­ber – 16 Novem­ber

Flower (political) power

We’ve already seen polit­i­cal signs bring­ing out the worst in peo­ple, but check this out: flo­ral trib­utes to sup­port signs for good polit­i­cal par­ties:

More please!

Wine from the other side of the world

We’re reg­u­lars at Cel­lar-Vate’s Wine­mak­ers’ Din­ners, because we love meet­ing the wine­mak­ers, we love New Zealand wine, and we love hav­ing it matched with tasty tasty food. But we’re not just patri­ot­ic racial­ists, oh no. We’ll drink wine from any­where! And that’s why we’re excit­ed about the upcom­ing Euro­pean Wines Tast­ing in the Cab­i­net Room above the Back­bencher next Wednes­day Octo­ber 22 at 6pm:

The thriv­ing wine indus­try in New Zealand and Aus­tralia has pro­vid­ed us with a vast array of superb wine to savour or cel­lar, but it’s easy to for­get about the ancient viti­cul­tur­al tra­di­tions of Europe. As imports of Euro­pean wines grow steadi­ly, there is now a great selec­tion avail­able. How­ev­er, the region­al denom­i­na­tions and clas­si­fi­ca­tions can be intim­i­dat­ing, and the New Zealand wine indus­try’s focus on sin­gle vari­etals means we are often cau­tious about buy­ing Euro­pean wines because we don’t know what they are made from. This is a shame, as Euro­pean wines often rep­re­sent great val­ue, and due to their food-friend­ly nature are great to enjoy with friends and fam­i­ly. This tast­ing is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about some unfa­mil­iar grape vari­eties, which grapes you should expect to find in wines from dif­fer­ent regions (and there­fore how the wine should taste), and to nav­i­gate some unac­cus­tomed flavours.

Tick­ets are $40 for sev­en wines matched with six small cours­es with matched wine, and book­ings are still avail­able if you email becs[at]cellar-vate.co.nz. We’ll see you there — we’ll be the ones hold­ing out our glass­es for a top-up.

UPDATE: Here’s the menu for tomor­row:

WBL 2008 Round Three Results

I was­n’t drink­ing last week at the bowl­ing, so con­se­quent­ly, I for­got to pick up the score sheets. Ridicu­lous, I know.

But I can tell you that while a Dom Post pho­tog­ra­ph­er snapped mer­ri­ly away, the Mighty Boost beat the Bowl­ing­ton­ista AND got the slow­est bowl, that the Pur­ple Cobras beat Xero, and that Fer­als showed up just to drink and cheer us on, so they got a league point. That means the scores stand as:

Bowl­ing­ton­ista: 4
Fur­ry Fer­als: 16
Mighty Boost: 15
Pur­ple Cobras: 15
Xero: 4

Things are look­ing as tight as the holes in a num­ber 8 ball right now, so tonight will no doubt be full of excite­ment and sab­o­tage. But, if you’ll just let me put on my teacher’s hat for a minute here, I was made aware of some rather unsports­man­like crit­i­cism last week, and that is not cool. By all means, talk your­self up, and put down teams as a whole, but repeat­ed call­ing out an indi­vid­ual play­er’s tech­nique, espe­cial­ly when you don’t actu­al­ly know them is for chumps. And there aren’t any chumps in our league, right?

Howe About Some Alt-Country?

“If there were only one per­son allowed to con­tribute fur­ther to the over-stocked pool of record­ed music on this plan­et it should be Howe Gelb” — John Parish

Kingpin: There Can Be Only One

The Welling­ton­ista sea­son of NZ fea­ture films con­tin­ues this Wednes­day with King­pin (1985), the pre­de­ces­sor to last week’s film Mark II.

Star­ring much the same cast but with the addi­tion of the won­der­ful and great­ly-missed Wi Kuki Kaa, King­pin tells the sto­ry of a provin­cial borstal: a world where only the strong sur­vive and The King­pin is the biggest, the mean­est, the tough­est, the boss. And, there can be only one.

Tick­ets $8 or $6 con­ces­sion — which includes a com­pli­men­ta­ry glass of wine (with ID) unless you can tell us which Hol­ly­wood block­buster pinched its tagline from King­pin, and we’ll give you a dou­ble pass. Film com­mences 7pm.

More details on The Film Archive’s web­site…

Some YouTube clip good­ies after the jump!

Vintage alert!

Now this is the kind of infor­ma­tion I’d usu­al­ly keep close to my chest but it feels too mean to keep secret.

Put these dates in your diary imme­di­ate­ly: 15 and 16 NOVEMBER for the ECLECTIC JUMBLE SALE!!!!

The bril­liant Maria from Eclec­tic in Nel­son (you may remem­ber her from var­i­ous Cuba St Car­ni­val stalls, she has excep­tion­al­ly plait­ed hair and impec­ca­ble taste) is hav­ing a clear-out.

She has over 3000 items to get rid of:
linen, lace, tex­tiles, fab­ric (alert all your crafty friends!!!) shoes, bags, hats, clothes, jew­ellery, scarves and more! And it’s ALL VINTAGE.

Not like a dodgy garage sale but a com­plete vin­tage jum­ble sale!!!! And most things priced between $5-$20! There will also be some fur­ni­ture depend­ing on how much she can load in the truck.

It’s going to be some­where in New­town. Will post the details when I know them (or maybe not so I can guar­an­tee I’m first in line — heh heh).