now we’re cooking with fire

Leaf­ing through the Welling­ton on a Plate cat­a­log some months ago, one event in par­tic­u­lar seemed to stand out for me. This was Cook­ing Over Fire, The Argen­tine Way, to be held at El Mata­dor, the new “Café, Asador Grill & Bar” up Cuba Street. Asador is the Argen­tine nation­al dish, a way of slow-cook­ing […]

Beer what you want to beer

It’s Choice Beer Week here in Welling­ton and last night The Sut­ton Group Brew­ers Guild of New Zealand Awards took place at the Michael Fowler Cen­tre. Har­ring­ton’s Brew­eries of Christchurch took out the top hon­ours and were named Cham­pi­on Brew­ery in New Zealand for 2012. Welling­ton, being the self-claimed and now gen­er­al­ly accept­ed Craft Beer […]

More WOAP: the bland, the sublime and the curious

As I said before, I’m work­ing my way around the lunchtime Dine menus of places near my work. Here’s what I’ve got to report. 1. Vivant 2. Lit­tle Beer Quar­ter 3. Ti Kou­ka Cafe 4. Finc

Benefit Concert for The Court Theatre at Circa

Next Mon­day (20 August) a group of Welling­ton per­form­ers will be get­ting togeth­er to raise funds for The Court The­atre in Christchurch. Bad­ly affect­ed by the earth­quakes (forced to aban­don thir­­ty-five years of sets, cos­tumes, and scripts) The Court The­atre has opened again in a new venue affec­tion­ate­ly called ‘the Shed’. They have a space […]

Wellington on a Plate so far

Welling­ton on a Plate opened on Fri­day. How’s it been for you so far? We’ve been try­ing to share peo­ple’s microre­views on Twit­ter, and of course @wellyonaplate will be even more infor­ma­tive,  but I thought I’d do some prop­er write­ups for you about what I’ve been eat­ing. So, in chrono­log­i­cal order: Dine menu at The […]

Review: West End Girls

The first job artist Bar­bara Tate had in Soho was in a bar.  Soon she was charmed into work­ing as a maid for Mae,  a ‘glam­orous West End Girl ‘. Ken Dun­cum has adapt­ed Tate’s mem­oir about her time work­ing for a pros­ti­tute in Soho. It’s fun and fizzy in the first half before things […]

Brancott all dressed up and ready to WOW you

We’ve real­ly enjoyed going to  the Bran­cott Estate World of Wear­ableArt Awards Show over the past cou­ple of years, back from when the nam­ing rights spon­sor had a dif­fer­ent name. We’ve also real­ly enjoyed wine over the past twen­ty years or so as well. Nat­u­ral­ly, some­thing that mix­es the two is going to make us hap­py.  Bran­cott […]

A lion (and others) in winter

Right now the mag­no­lias are in bloom along Roy Street in New­town, and it’s gor­geous. But of course, it’s around this time last year that it snowed, so don’t be fooled — it’s still win­ter. The good news though, means that Welling­ton Zoo has entry for only $5 on Wednes­days through­out all of August. Nat­u­ral­ly […]

the Friendly Cyclist

Some­times you see them: dig­ni­fied, ter­ri­bly cool, impec­ca­bly dressed, and upright, mak­ing their way through the rush hour traf­fic on their old-fash­ioned bikes in a man­ner poles oppo­site to the more com­mon flu­o­ro speed­sters. A bea­con of bicy­cling style, and also: fair­ly damned hot. Yes, you think, now that’s cer­tain­ly one mode of com­muter cycling […]

It’s all in the game.

Avert your eyes if you are veg­e­tar­i­an, have an aver­sion to meat prod­ucts, or if you’ve had a pet bird and now chick­en is not a menu option. What fol­lows is a dis­cus­sion of a delec­table degus­ta­tion din­ner con­sist­ing of game birds. Unless you belong to one of the three groups above how can you […]