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, […]