Baghrir and Maamol

So this week I’m extending my Mediterranean food knowledge, courtesy of Lazeeza (Arabic for delicious) on Dixon Street in the former Simply Paris premises (beside Dixon Street Deli). Turkish, Lebanese, Greek and North African offerings, to name but a few. The cabinet food was educational and the brunch menu offered a few different twists (brioche french […]

More new stuff…

It must be spring. Some new places to tempt your palate: Bureau (the former Liquidate folks) at 120 The Terrace.  The quintessential wine and tapas bar with excellent food and service (would we expect anything less?) – a selection of tasty tapas and a few mains and blackboard desserts (slow roasted tangy pork croquettes with […]

feed the birds?

So you happen to live out west in the faulted hill-folds. One day a kākā lands on your deck railing and winningly bounces along and back. It is looking at you. It is looking for food. Its head bobs up and down. It knows you have some. Do you: A) put out a saucer of […]

Review: The Wind City

The latest book from local speculative fiction publishers Steam Press is the début novel of nineteen-year old Summer Wigmore. It’s a wonderful urban fantasy, set quite concretely in the very real environs of modern-day Wellington, but populated throughout with mythical characters and creatures from Maori folklore (collectively known as iwi atua). Our two main protagonists […]

Stop taking selfies and enter this photography competition instead

Carter Observatory, that big old bubble up on the hill, is running a photography contest with a buttload of prizes, and you should enter it. The title is “Light & Dark” and anything under that goes.  Judges include Mark Gee, who you may remember from such moon photos as this. There’s a kids’ category too, […]

Zesty success

So I’m going to declare right up front that I work for Zest Food Tours of New Zealand before I congratulate them on 10 years of success this month.  No mean feat in the sometimes-fickle tourism/hospitality industry. And rated one of the world’s top 10 Walking Tours for Globetrotting Foodies by Lonely Planet this year. […]

Solo 36 – Hall of the Unrecognised

On now at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts the installation ‘Hall of the Unrecognised’ celebrates the inaugural National Council of Women which first met in Christchurch on 13 April 1896. The installation is part of the Solo 36 group show. It’s an interesting and provoking exhibition considering the current debate around rape and […]

Kristmas knack

Kristmas knack

There is only 40 days till christmas. See did i scare you? i scared myself looking up that one, but it’s also why I’m a little relieved that Kristmas knack is on this Saturday November 16th. Because it gives a girl a chance to go shopping for christmas presents, but it’s still far away enough from […]

Coffee for John Key and America’s Cup fans

Tonight we went to the opening of the Nespresso “boutique” on Lambton Quay, because frankly, we’d go to the opening of envelopes if they involved Louis Roederer champagne(1) (although a number of people we know turned down the invitation, sent us links to a Buzzfeed article about disposable pods and then commissioned haikus) and it was […]

Wine-o-clock

It seems its wine-o-clock time again. Greytown, Martinborough and Gladstone are waking up from winter and preparing for Toast Martinborough next weekend.  The tickets are all sold for this year other than some packages with Rydges if you’re super keen (bear in mind that does mean a sloshy old bus ride over that hill and […]