WOP: let’s hear it for the Floyd

I have clear­ly timed career moves bad­ly, because in the hun­gry wait for Welling­ton on a Plate I was unem­ployed and spent large parts of the day dream­ing about where and what I would eat, but now it’s on, I have a tem­po­rary job and it’s not in the CBD. Dis­as­ter! How­ev­er, it turned out […]

WOP: Give me shelter

So, Welling­ton on a Plate — it’s quite good, yeah? While Joan­na is a (deli­cious­ly) sea­soned pro, this is my first year sam­pling the culi­nary delights of the fes­ti­val of nomz. So I fig­ured I should share my find­ings. Here are my first two expe­ri­ences — Mar­tin Bosley’s and Fox­glove.

WOP: Eating the other cheek

Miss Hun­gry & Frozen said the oth­er day “I think cheeks are the new shanks”. Read­ing var­i­ous Dine menus for Welling­ton on Plate, they are indeed every­where. You won’t hear a com­plaint about that from me. Instead, you get to read about how I had beef cheeks for lunch and then din­ner on Thurs­day. Atlanta […]

WOP: A deluge of dreadfulness at Monsoon Poon

Our mouths have been work­ing over­time this week, with all the Welling­ton on a Plate action going around. Of course Tues­day had the abort­ed attempt at Lager­field and then eat­ing off the reg­u­lar menu at Fratel­li. Tonight we’ve got reviews of Mon­soon Poon, Atlanta and Bet­tys for you, which to sum up were DREADFUL, decent […]

Some Italian jobs

1. The Mediter­ranean Ware­house in New­town has under­gone some ren­o­va­tions tak­ing out the wall sep­a­rat­ing the pizze­ria from the ware­house, so now there’s an extend­ed deli counter and you dine among the shelves. The price of an indi­vid­ual piz­za may have grad­u­al­ly increased $4 over the past cou­ple’o years but now you can get a bowl of […]

Wellington on a delicious plate

It has been a cou­ple of weeks now since the launch of the Visa Welling­ton on a Plate pro­gramme, and we have been very remiss in not telling you about it. Your cred­it card, how­ev­er, will thank us, as many of the events are now sold out. The launch was held in Mojo’s roast­ing premis­es […]

TAWA5 Best Event

There’s always some­thing to do in this town we love, but these are the pick of the crop, and are cir­cled in red on our cal­en­dars. We’re count­ing the sleeps until next year’s events!

WOP Review: the $35 lunch at Foxglove

 Some­time last week I took my sis­ter to lunch at Fox­glove. We both start­ed with the caramelised onion soup in a cob bowl with gruyere cheese and white truf­fle, which was less liq­uid than we expect­ed, but it was deli­cious. Just look at it:

It was pret­ty fill­ing just by itself, so I was antic­i­pat­ing a small por­tion for my main. Instead, I got two glo­ri­ous bits of beer bat­tered mar­ket fish with green pea gribiche (which is pret­ty much just tar­tar sauce) AND then they brought out fries and sal­ad to go with it. Yum!

My sis­ter, mean­while, had con­fit chick­en leg with cray­fish ravi­o­li and mush­room cream.

What I tried of it was tasty, with a sur­prise cit­rus zing. Our Magrain Sav was deli­cious as well, full size por­tions served in full size glass­es (take note, Finc!). Ser­vice was great, until we tried to pay, and were left floun­der­ing for about ten min­utes while we were also wait­ing for our cof­fees to go, because lunch had tak­en about an hour and twen­ty min­utes. Oth­ers have com­plained that the ferns by the door are smelly, but we were on the oth­er side of the restau­rant so we did­n’t notice.  Based on the qual­i­ty of the food, and the gen­er­ous serv­ings of it, I would def­i­nite­ly return to Fox­glove, as long as I had plen­ty of time to spare. 

WOP: Cupcakes and Cocktails

 On Mon­day night my sis­ter and I went to our first Welling­ton on a Plate event — the way sold-out (they added a cou­ple more ses­sions even) Cup­cakes and Cock­tails at Martha’s Pantry. Giv­en that nei­ther of us is a slouch in the kitchen or bar, we weren’t sure how much we’d actu­al­ly learn from the event, but since cup­cakes and cock­tails are two of our favourite things, we thought we’d give it a go. And when we walked in the door and saw that the McKen­zie broth­ers were doing the mix­ing, we knew we were in safe hands. 

I fig­ure I’ll do this post basi­cal­ly just a series of cup­cake porn pho­tos. You don’t mind, do you? Good. 

This was what was wait­ing for each of us at the tables — sand­wich­es to nib­ble on, cup­cakes, icing and the cup­cake recipe. We were also giv­en Win­ter Pimms Punch to drink.

piping

We had a cou­ple of demon­stra­tions about dif­fer­ent ways to pipe, and were let loose on our own cock­tails. 

piping

You can see here that we had vary­ing tech­niques and lev­els of suc­cess with that. 

Then, before too much icing could acci­dent­ly end up in our mouths, Justin McKen­zie, wear­ing one blue glove that was kind of creepy let us in on the mag­ic for­mu­la for cock­tails: two parts strong, one part sweet, one part sour. It’s so sim­ple, I wast­ed all that mon­ey in Hooch and Hawthorne and Cuck­oo for noth­ing!

cocktail ingredients

WOP Review: the $25 lunch at Finc

pork belly For my first Welling­ton on a Plate meal deal, I decid­ed to go to Finc, with the delight­ful com­pa­ny of a friend I’d just seen killed twice on Sat­ur­day night. Peo­ple have dif­fer­ing opin­ions about Finc, but for myself, I’ve always found it great in the evenings and very aver­age at lunchtimes. For pork bel­ly, I would take the plunge.