A sausagefest with Harrington’s at Logan Brown

As should be obvi­ous by now, we love a free din­ner here at the Wel­ling­tonista. So when we were invited by Harrington’s Small­goods to din­ner at Logan Brown, of course we said yes. It ended up being one of the more inter­est­ing din­ners I’ve been to in my life so this review is going to […]

Graze at the Portlander

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by the lovely people at the Portlander to head in one freez­ing even­ing, along with a num­ber of Ins­tagram­mers, to feast on their new graz­ing concept. From our sig­na­ture long bone OP rib-eye presen­ted at your table, to our on the bone grass fed Sir­loin dry aged in house […]

Chasing the Black Dog with beer

Last night we went to the open­ing of the new Black Dog brew­ery on Cuba Street, and, spoil­er alert, it was bloody delight­ful. All pics were sup­plied by the pub­li­cist because if you fol­low us on Twit­ter, you’ll know I can­’t pho­to­graph for shit. A con­fes­sion: I had nev­er been to the old Black Dog […]

Review: Kátya Kabanová

Kátya Kaban­ová was the first opera I ever saw, back in 1996 when it was here for the Inter­na­tion­al Fest­iv­al. I was 16, and we got $5 tick­ets to the dress rehersal through drama class. I was over­whelmed by the music and the draaaaama and the rain on stage and the cliff that rose up on hydraul­ics […]

WOAP 17: Concrete, Glasshouse, Hillside

How are we all going with Wel­ling­ton on a Plate then? As we tweeted today, there’s no less than three altern­at­ives to the offi­cial site in order to help you nav­ig­ate your way to a bur­ger (One, two, three). Maybe they’ll be incor­por­ated next year? In the mean­time, here’s what I’ve been eat­ing Lock Stock […]

WOAP 2017: Portlander

The Portlander at the Rydges Wel­ling­ton is well-known for its beef – they are a steak res­taur­ant after all. So of course their new­ish head chef decided to do a chick­en bur­ger for Wel­ling­ton on a Plate, because it was his chance to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. I was lucky enough to be invited in to […]

WOAP ’16: a burger, a stew and a beer

The mad rush of eat­ing con­tin­ues, so without any fur­ther ado, let’s get into it. The Steak­hold­er at Portlander You know by now how we feel about the Portlander, so of course this was going to be on my wish­list. “Medi­um rare rib eye with Scotty’s Meats double smoked bacon, fried egg, onions, melted Te […]

Karmageddonit

Any­one who refers to bur­gers as “dude food” clearly has nev­er had their uter­us scream­ing at them for meat before. Accord­ingly, I was bloody happy to be invited along to the launch of the Karmaged­don bur­ger – Karma Col­a’s col­lab­or­a­tion with Grill Meets Beer. The Karmaged­don bur­ger is made with Karma Cola braised pulled pork, […]

Springing into a spa

Not that long ago, a new spa opened up in town, as part of the new apart­ment com­plex where Il Casino once played host to a mil­lion mar­riage pro­pos­als. We got invited to come and try them out, and so off to upper Tory Street I went in search of some total relax­a­tion. Oh the […]

Fancy times at a fancy hotel

Wel­ling­ton does not have a lot of very big big hotels. I believe the Rydges has the most guestrooms (at 280), and the may­or was mis­quoted in the Domin­ion Post as say­ing Wel­ling­ton has no five star hotels – a fact the Bolton and the Museum Art Hotel would prob­ably take umbrage with. In fact, […]