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 […]