Name And Shame

We’ve been out for dinner at quite a few restaurants in Wellington. Some of these purport to be top-class dining...they certainly seem to be charging for it. And yet, they seem to get a few things wrong. Sometimes quite minor, sometimes fairly major.

Tonight, we went out for dinner at the White House Restaurant, on Oriental Parade. This is reputed to be one of the best restaurants in Wellington, and if you read their reviews and customer comments on Dineout you’d certainly think so. And, to be fair, it really should be one of the best restaurants in Wellington.

You can tell already, can’t you? Right, let’s get on with it: To begin with, we were seated and offered drinks. These came after about 10 minutes – an orange juice and a vodka & tonic…with plastic straws in them. Classy, eh?

Next up, we were served with amuses bouches in the form of snapper ceviche and cucumber jelly. Really quite nice. The waitress cleared the plates away:

“Did you enjoy your amuses bouches?”

“Yes” replied Nicola, “my bouche was very amused.”

“Never heard that one before” was the sarky comeback from the waitress.

The starters, when they arrived, were competently-seared scallops and a crab raviolo (described on the menu as ravioli, but we can’t all be experts in Italian, can we?...well, actually, if you’re running a top-class restaurant, you really should know this).

When the main courses arrived, they were tepid. They had clearly been sitting on the pass (get me with my restaurant terminology! A sure sign of spending too much time watching Masterchef) for a while as the purée had developed a crust. Things improved with the cheeseboard – we shared a plate of one English, one Spanish and three New Zealand cheeses, served with home-made (apparently) raisins and half a poached pear.

After tea and coffee, we found that it was gone eleven o’clock. So, over three and a half hours to serve a three-course meal. They must be watching the snails and tortoises whizz past in the kitchen. Thank god we didn’t go for the degustation menu – we’d still be sitting there come breakfast time at that rate.

So far, of four top-class restaurants that we’ve sampled, three have been found wanting in some respect. The only place we’ve been to so far that hasn’t cocked it up in some way is Matterhorn.