Clear And Present Manger

On Friday night we headed out straight after work for dinner and a show.

Back in June, Cuisine NZ announced the 50 finalists in its restaurant of the year awards. 50 restaurants were named, 10 of which were in Wellington. Some of these we knew and had visited, other names were new to us, so we had decided on a programme of visiting all of them. Logan Brown was for once absent from the list - but this was due to their chef being one of the judges rather than anything to do with the quality of their food. One of the Wellington finalists (and eventual runner-up in the awards) was The Ambeli - a modern European bistro on Majoribanks Street. So we decided to go there for dinner before the show.

After a brief discussion with John, the maitre d' and sommelier, I decided to let him choose the wines to accompany my starter of vine leaf-wrapped quail and main of fillet steak. This is because he often has wines that are not shown on the list (either at all, or not by the glass), as he may be trying them out, (as was the case with the red I tried), or had opened one at lunchtime. Unfortunately we had  to depart in a bit of a rush to catch the show, and so I wasn't able to have a full discussion about the wines with John. However, we had a quick chat, the upshot of which was that next time we go there I'll have a glass of wine on the house, and maybe a bit more time to enjoy them!

We dashed out to make sure we didn't get left out of the show, which was on at the Downstage Theatre just across the road. The show, Clear And Present Manger, is Raybon Kan's Christmas show, in which he gives his unique take on anything and everything Christmassy. His humour is more observational (and a little bit ranty at times) so raised chuckles and titters rather than side-splitting hilarity.