Hot buttered coconut

Have you got your christ­mas nog on yet? Hot but­tered coconut cock­­­tail-in-a-mug from the beau­ti­ful peo­ple at The Hangar.  A pret­ty del­ish way to cel­e­brate the sea­son. The WellingtonNZ.com advent cal­en­dar has all sorts of good­ies on offer, many in the food and drink are­na. Some oth­er exam­ples: Zibib­bo half price tapas in the bar […]

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 […]