Capitol (DINE Wellington set lunch)

Just let me say this: try and get yourself down to Capitol sometime over the next week and a half or so. Go at lunchtime, when the Wellington on a Plate set lunch is on offer - at $25 for two courses and a glass of wine, it's incredibly good value. And, most importantly, it's good.

With last weekend being that glorious couple of days where Wellington on a Plate and the film festival overlap, I found myself hanging out around the Embassy theatre over much of Saturday and Sunday. And next door to the Embassy (actually, on the ground floor corner of the Embassy building) is, of course, Capitol. So it was an obvious choice for lunch when my dad and I had a couple hours to kill between film festival screenings.

If you're new to Wellington on a Plate set lunches, the way they generally work is this: you choose two courses from a list of starters, mains, and desserts, plus a glass of one or two Wellington region wines on offer. 

We started with pâté and soup. The pâté - made from free range chicken livers - was dreamily smooth, served with thin, chewy ciabatta toasts and a Wairarapa pear chutney.

The soup - Parkvale cap mushroom, lentil and herb, with Pandoro croutons - was simple and light, the excellent broth carrying the earthy mushroom flavour, the fresh herbs and clear broth making it feel bright and ready for spring.  

Both mains on the set menu are worth trying - this was the fried arrow squid with aioli and rocket. It's good: nice and simple, tasty, inoffensive; the aioli especially packs a garlicky punch.

But oh my god, the veal. So tender you could cut it with a fork, so perfectly seasoned, and the rich, savoury jus plus the creamy mashed potato and crispy shards of pancetta and fried sage: YES. This is the kind of dish you take one bite of and can't help but burst into a big, wide grin. It was incredibly good. 

Some restaurants participating in DINE Wellington will let you add on a third course for, say, an extra $10 or so. Unfortunately there was no such option at Capitol - not that we didn't try for the Wellington on a Plate dessert (lemon mousse with Lavender's Green syrup and baked rhubarb). And because we were there during Capitol's normal brunch hours, there wasn't a dessert menu to choose something sweet from.

Luckily there was this semolina pudding on the brunch menu, which really was more porridge-y than pudding-y, but hey, that's what you get for picking dessert from among sweet breakfast dishes. Anyway, the poached tamarillo it came topped with was beautiful: tart, and softly sweet, and the most sultry-red colour.

There's something really magical about sitting in a window seat at Capitol with a glass of wine in hand, the afternoon sun streaming in, making even a mid-winter day feel like a relaxed summer evening. The food was beautiful, the service good, the atmosphere wonderful. I don't know why I don't eat here more often, but I bet that's about to change. 

Capitol

10 Kent Terrace

Wellington

(04) 384 2855

Wellington on a Plate runs from 10 - 6 August 2012.

Gipsy Kitchen, Strathmore

I freaking love this place. Excellent coffee, excellent sandwiches, delicious pies, super nice staff, I could go on and on. So, okay, I will.

Let's start with the coffee. They use Supreme beans, and while I don't like to think I pick favourites among Wellington's coffee roasters, perhaps it is more than coincidence that lately, all of my favourite cafes use Supreme? But anyway, I digress. It's not so much that Gipsy Kitchen uses Supreme as much as the fact that I have yet to have a bad coffee there. And, if you can't (or don't want to) drink cow's milk in your coffee you're not limited to soy - there's the option of goat's (yes, goat's) milk or rice* milk, too. I once sampled some of fellow blogger Shirleen's goat's milk flat white, and I can tell you, it's not overly goaty or pungent - just has a little bit extra tang. So for those so inclined, the option is there.

The food is all counter food, and it's all beautiful, from the luxuriously folded layers of pastry making up the scones, both sweet and savoury (who puts mashed potato in a savoury scone? these geniuses, that's who), to the gorgeous rectangular tarts and pies (a superb potato top number immediately springs to mind), to all kinds of sandwiches almost too beautiful to eat. Fresh herbs seem to be everywhere, everything tastes as it should, a bit better even. I'm aware that I'm gushing here. Don't worry, it's warranted.

And I actually think I'm in love with everyone who works there, male and female. Certainly they know that the best way to run a cafe is to be charming to everyone; no silent, aloof baristas here. They're all very cool, but not too cool for you, and they always seem to be having fun, listening to good music, calling everyone "babe" in the most genuine, un-ironic way you could possibly say it. It's practically impossible not to have an immediate cafe crush on whoever is taking your order/making your coffee/bringing you water/etc. I'm speaking from experience.

Sometimes it's hard to get a seat because it's only tiny - just a few counter seats along the window, plus some tables outside and some stools in a courtyard out the back - with the next door shopfront used for food prep. Apparently, on Mondays and Tuesdays the deli is closed and the shop next door transforms into a place called Zuris' Coffee Shoppe. I work too far away to visit, but I'm sure it's also great. 

Normally I'd go through and describe some of the food, but I think this time I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Also, most of these photos were taken** on solo visits spanning the last couple months, and I hadn't been thinking about blogging on some of the earlier visits, so... I don't think I could accurately describe exactly what everything was like. It doesn't matter too much. It was all delicious. I'm going back tomorrow. 


*? I will check asap, and fix this if I'm wrong. 
**yes, okay, instagrammed...

Gipsy Kitchen

4 Glamis Ave

Strathmore*

Wellington 

04 388 4455

(If you don't have a car, don't let this stop you. Get the #44 bus. It's worth it)

Auckland Eats

Every now and then I feel like getting out of town (it's been my New Year's resolution for the last couple years to leave Wellington at least once a month - the only New Year's resolution I've ever kept). And when I don't have the time or money to go further afield, which is most of the time, I head to Auckland. Often enough, in fact, that one of my friends recently told me it's almost like I live there - but like I'm one of those people who doesn't hang out that often.

It does almost feel that way, except I like to think of myself as the kind of person who emerges from seclusion more than once every few weeks. And no, I'm not thinking of moving to Auckland. But I'm getting into Auckland lots - I feel like in the last few years Auckland's developed a burgeoning cafe scene, or maybe it's just that I've discovered a lot more places since upping the frequency of my visits. Anyway, one thing is certain: when in Auckland, I eat well, whether it's at a cafe, restaurant or cheap and cheerful joint.

Here are a few of the places I've found pretty good over my last visits. Since many of these places I've only visited once or twice, rather than attempt a full write-up I'll leave you with my impressions and photos of what I ate:

Barilla Dumpling, Dominion Rd

I visited Barilla Dumpling for the first (and only, but certainly not the last) time when I was up in Auckland back in March. It's been much-talked about (see here and here and here and here) but I'll add my own two cents: awesome, no-frills dumplings, the likes of which you won't find in Wellington. The dumpling menu is about a zillion flavours long, you can only order them by the twenty (which will set you back roundabout ten bucks) and you can get them  boiled, steamed or fried. Eighty dumplings for four ravenously hungover twentysomething girls? Bring it on. 

(I have to admit, though, eighty was possibly a bit ambitious.)

Barilla Dumpling

571 Dominion Rd

Balmoral

Auckland

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Kokako Cafe, Grey Lynn

 

Kokako's new(ish) outpost in Grey Lynn deserves a mention even though I didn't particularly enjoy my visit there back in April, but then that can be attributed to the fact that on the day I visited I was suffering from one of those awful colds that completely robs you of your appetite and your sense of taste and smell. Horrible for trying a place for the first time.

But if I had been able to taste what I was having I might've told you that my smoothie was at once refreshingly tasting and refreshingly different: almond and coconut milk instead of dairy (probably a good thing, since I was sick), blueberries, banana, goji berries. And even without tasting it I was won over by the presentation - why are things served in jars somehow so likeable? Maybe it's some kind of quasi-hipster aesthetic that feels right at home in Grey Lynn.

Speaking of Grey Lynn hipster types, the place was full of them - there were those guys I saw at Golden Dawn the night before, here was a table of girls in improbably cool outfits (for me at least) for a Sunday morning. But despite feeling a bit sceney it's a nice place for anyone to hang out, my ailing self included. It's bright and airy and though I can't quite remember through my fever-clouded memory, I think the staff were nice. Good things. 

The baked eggs and cornbread I had came with not two, but three eggs (which sort of justifies the $19 price tag) atop a mix of black beans (yum) and kumara (I probably would've preferred potato). And, okay, I couldn't really taste much but I'm pretty sure those fresh chillies on top cleared my sinuses enough for my sense of smell to return slightly before lunch at Depot later that day (but more on that in another post).

Kokako Cafe

Corner of Williamson Ave & Great North Rd

Grey Lynn

Auckland

http://www.kokako.co.nz/

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Little and Friday, Newmarket 

There's been a little bit of buzz in the back of my mind for a while now telling me to get to Little and Friday. I'd heard bits and pieces about it on blogs and social media, they've just put out a gorgeous-looking cookbook, everyone seems to be talking about their cakes and pies and doughnuts. Their main outpost is in Takapuna, but not too long ago they opened up another cafe in a fabric store in Newmarket. 

On Saturday we went there and the place was intimidatingly packed: a line snaked around the counter, the big communal tables were packed shoulder-to-shoulder with cool girls and lunching ladies, staff squeezing through the crowds to deliver coffee and heated up pies and quiches and so on.

As is ideally the case with all counter-food joints, by the time we got to the front of the queue a couple seats had opened up for us. Phew. No awkward milling about or hovering over some poor souls trying to finish their lunch. 

There are about a million kinds of quiche (well, a handful at least, but there might as well have been a million, it was so hard to decide) and my beetroot and blue cheese one was definitely pretty tasty. Excellent pastry.

And this is probably the worst picture of a doughnut I've ever taken, but, guys: this. Don't eat it if you're after something light and fluffy: it's got a good coat of icing sugar on the outside that sort of crusts up like a cross between a sticky glaze and a crunchy sugar coating. And the vanilla custard filling? Dreamy. I think there was also some kind of jam or fruit or something inside but I wasn't even paying attention because it was all so rich and delicious. Probably not advisable to have more than one a week though, unless you want to be on a constant sugarhigh. I was.

Little and Friday

Martha's Fabrics

12 Melrose St

Newmarket

Auckland

http://littleandfriday.co.nz/

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Xi'an Food Bar


Last one for now, and also the last and most recent meal I had in Auckland. This place is somewhere my friend Sophie told me about, and then another friend suggested we meet at a Chinese noodle place on Anzac Ave, and when I got there I realised with a happy coincidental thrill that they were one and the same place.




The place is spartan, almost dingy, and there are these funny ordering devices on the table that I feel would've been really futuristic in the early 1990s but now feel a bit comical. Anyway, you punch in your order number - no human contact required - and once your food is ready someone brings it over to you.

Xi'an food - from the same place as the terracotta warriors I believe - is not something I'm really familiar with, though I wish I was. I can't stop thinking about the hand-pulled noodles I had: $9 will get you a very filling bowl of freshly made, thick, flat noodles. You can have them in soup, or with chilli oil and a variety of toppings. I had braised pork and oh my god: whatever they did to this pork, I want to do to all pork I eat from now on. It was like a tangier, spicier Chinese cousin of Southern pulled pork or Mexican carnitas. Delicious. And did I mention only $9 for a huge portion - enough for me to eat half and take the rest home with me on the plane?

If I wasn't so full from the noodles I would've tried their burgers - a Xi'an style bun, toasted and halved, with different meat fillings. And cheap - I believe around $4.50. I'm sure they'd all be delicious but if I could have that pork in one of those buns - oh man. I'll be making a trip back for sure. 

Xi'an Food Bar

11 Anzac Ave

Auckland

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Auckland: love you lots. I may never move there, but that doesn't stop me from visiting, and eating, and discovering. And, best part? I'll be up again soon. Aucklanders (and Auckland-lovers), where should I visit next?