Return to the valley of the dolls

I was in Wel­ling­ton, my first time back since I left in April, and I was furi­ously catch­ing up on things. I got the bus out to the Hutt and vis­ited the Dowse Art Museum. It was choice, but as I left the gal­lery, I spied some­thing much more intriguing across the square. Over at […]

Christmas Shopping – Part 2

Today it’s all about the mar­kets, for there are many mar­kets to be found in our fine city at any time. Sadly, Christ­mas seems to bring every Tom, Dick and mar­ket out of the wood­work. So I’m going to focus on some of the bet­ter cur­ated mar­kets where you walk in with high hopes of […]

More Auckland vs Wellington malarky

Recently menus.co.nz put up a piece called Auck­land is the cap­it­al of cuisine – not Wel­ling­ton, and then asked a num­ber of Wel­ling­ton food blog­gers to respond. The Auck­land inter­net seems to be very short of space, as our response was edited quite heav­ily(*) des­pite stick­ing to the word lim­it (and links changed to pro­mote […]

Joanna had a lot of (Silere) lamb (at Hummingbird)

A couple of weeks ago, I went for din­ner at Hum­ming­bird, and as well as eat­ing fish tacos with my girl­friend (oh grow up!), we ordered the Lamb for Two. What we got was lamb shank with couscous, char­grilled flat­breads, the cream­i­est hum­mus ever, baba gan­oush, some pickles and the most amaz­ingly tender and fla­vour­some […]

Review: Richard Meros Salutes the Southern Man

“Wel­come to the Desert of the Real,” muttered Laurence Fish­burne in 1999, prof­fer­ing a pill-tot­ing hand to lead us through the impend­ing eschat­on. Anoth­er dec­ade, anoth­er loom­ing onto­lo­gic­al sin­gu­lar­ity, and whose palm are we to grasp? A glance down Cour­tenay Place offers the obvi­ous answer: beck­on­ing on the threshold, a tower­ing Gan­dalf with more storeys […]

Middle of Middle Earth Market and Movies

There’s a hob­bit-abrew­ing in this wee city of ours. Today we’ve got anoth­er guest post from Heath­erC from Food­ie Gems of Wel­ling­ton all about the mar­kets going on. Get in quick!  If you’re a LOTR fan, you could do worse than get your­self down to Wait­angi Park for 6pm each of the next three nights […]

Christmas Shopping – Part 1

For many Christ­mas is about the new­est shi­ni­est toys and things that break with­in 10 minutes of the box being opened, a sea­son of malls, bad music and chain stores. But those people are not us, oh no, for we know that Wel­ling­ton is an abund­ance of boutique shops and delight­ful mar­kets. So with the […]

Give pottery for Xmas gifts, gain a mother’s love

You know what’s a nice thing to do? Buy­ing pot­tery to give to people as gifts. You know what else is a nice thing to do? Pimp­ing your moth­er out. Awww yeah. It just so hap­pens that my moth­er is a pot­ter, and she’s hav­ing her annu­al pre-Christ­mas open house at her studio/gallery this week­end […]

Some food-related things that are good right now

We went to Char­lotte, the new steak­house at 201 Cuba Street that is in the house with the checkered past. The ser­vice was very friendly, and the steaks were cooked beau­ti­fully. They are busy because they had a stu­pidly cheap Groupon deal, but it is worth mak­ing a reser­va­tion for, if you are of a […]

Review: The mousetrap

Agatha Christie’s The mousetrap is now in its six­tieth year of con­tinu­ous pro­duc­tion. It opened in 1952 (1952!) and is quite pos­sibly more fam­ous for being fam­ous now, rather than the qual­ity of the work. As part of the cel­eb­ra­tions of the show’s longev­ity, 60 pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tions have been licensed around the world. The Aus­trali­an […]