Curried Garage

Curry and beer. Beer and curry. Could a food and a drink be better matched? The Garage Project evidently didn’t think so, and invited some of Wellington’s top chefs to come up with a curry to match some of their quirkier beers. Garage Project (so called because they are based in a former petrol station in Te Aro) have brewed some weirdly-named beers in the past, and this evening’s offerings included some of their finest.

We were greeted with a chicken satay and a tin of Pils ’nThrills, and bagged ourselves some spaces at one of the tables set up in the brewery. There wasn’t an awful lot of room as this is not usually a dining venue, and there were only around 30 people present – I’d had to be very quick on the click to secure tickets when they went on sale, they sold out in about 2 minutes!

The first course was a beef vindaloo prepared by John Allred of Osteria Del Toro – this was plenty-much spicy, and washed down with a glass of Cockswain’s Extraordinary ordinary – an English-style bitter served from a hand pump. This was definitely the hottest of the evening’s curries and, to my mind, the best. Next up was Martin Bosley’s chicken and pumpkin, which was a milder, tasty curry served with Red Rocks Reserve – a strong, caramel-flavoured beer which is flash-boiled with superheated volcanic rocks during the brewing process (instead of the more normal approach of applying external heat – this is because the beer is produced by a “steining” process, which involves a wooden kettle rather than a metal one). Third up was a Goan fish curry prepared by Raju Rai of Monsoon Poon, served with Pernicious Weed -  a particularly hoppy IPA which was ameliorated by the curry; and (we were getting quite full by this stage) the final curry, Dhaniwal lamb by Rex Morgan of Boulcott Street Bistro (famed for its winning T Rex burger from last year’s Burger Wellington competition), with Death From Above, a chilli-infused Indochine Pale Ale. This was my second-favourite curry of the night.

A curry

Each of the dishes was a lunch-sized portion of curry, with rice, so we were pretty well full by this time. But wait, there’s more! There was a pudding (fortunately non curry-based) of chilli chocolate brownie, with a glass of Lord Cockswain’s Courage, a Bourbon-barrel-aged porter. Delicious!

Duly stuffed, and just a little hazy, we staggered out into the night. Fortunately it had stopped raining, and even more fortunately, a cab was depositing its customer a few yards down the road and I was able to get home with the minimum of fuss.