Razorlight

The summer* of gigs has started, with Suzanne Vega a couple of weeks ago, and now Noughties almost-legends, indie rockers Razorlight. Remember them? They had a string of hits around 20 or so years ago, culminating in the No. 1 smash, America. They released three albums in that time before splitting up. Artistic differences? I think it was mainly that the singer, Johnny Borrell, was a bit of an arsehole. And by a bit, I mean a lot.

Anyway, that’s all in the past, they’ve reconciled their differences and are now doing America: 20^th Anniversary Tour. And they’re coming to New Zealand!

But first, of course, dinner. I booked Kisa as it’s handily placed, just up the road on Ghuznee Street, not far from the venue, Meow Nui. For once we dispensed with bread and dips, as these tend to fill you up with bread and dips, and dived straight into a selection of mixed mezze – kebabs, turşu, böreks, and cured fish. Yum! Once again, the Mosaic Group (of which they are part) are doing their passport promotion, so we’ll probably visit some of their other locations over the next few months.

Then on to Meow Nui. We’ve been there before, most recently to see Bret McKenzie. But what’s this? No seats? Yes, this is a proper, old-fashioned gig where you have to stand around waiting for the band to come on. Fortunately, there’s a bar. There was also a merch stand, but I didn’t fancy the design of any of the t-shirts so I skipped that one.

First up was local band Dropper, who came on for the traditional half-hour warm-up set. They’ve released an album on CD (yes, actual physical medium!) so I’ve ordered that.

Then on came Razorlight. They played a mix of songs, old and new, as they reformed in 2018 and have since released two albums, bringing their total to…five. Way to go, fellas! All the hits (they didn’t have enough to afford the luxury of leaving any out) interspersed with other songs, old and new material. Borrell isn’t much one for the bants between songs, they just got down and did it. He does have a lot of front-man energy, though, and loves showing of his ripped abs.

After an hour they left the stage before returning for a five-song encore, finishing up, inevitably, with America. A jolly good night out with proper rock’n’roll music. From here they’re going to Australia, then onwards to Europe and the UK. Catch them if you can!

 

Suzanne Vega

Suzanne Vega? Remember her? Marlene On The Wall and all that? Yes, she had a few hits in the mid-to-late Eighties. I even had her debut album on tape (tape!), but haven’t replaced it on CD since all my cassettes went to the great tape head in the sky, to be eternally chewed up. Nicola, though, is the proud owner of Solitude Standing, and I have 99.9F° (sic), from the Nineties. But she has a new (-ish) album out, and is “touring” New Zealand – i.e. playing Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland, which, frankly, is two more cities than a lot of visiting American artists manage. 

But first, dinner, as is tradition. We’ve not been to Wellington’s premier French-style restaurant, Le Bouillon Bel Air, for a long while – in fact, probably not since it opened! Which is (checks notes) two years ago! Time flies! Anyway, I had a hankering for some escargots, and this is probably the only place that actually does them in Wellington, so I booked it, with the proviso that we had to be out to get to the show. No problem, and I had my snails (delicious!) and confit de canard (not quite salted and aged to the extent that I would do, but still tasty), and a glass of French wine to boot. It was a rainy, windy, Sunday evening yet the place was almost full…quite a few may have been on the same mission as us as it’s only five minutes’ walk away…

…from St James Theatre. I’d misread the tickets and thought doors opened at 7:30pm (reasonable), but in fact a quick bit of Gemini-ing during dinner revealed (a) the show starts at 7:30pm, and (b) there’s no support act, so we resisted the blandishments of pudding and hotfooted it round the corner, to take our seats in the stalls.

She was prompt. None of your rock star messing about being late on stage. She kicked off straight away with Marlene On The Wall, so we all knew we were in the right place, and played a couple of other well-known songs before stopping for a chat. She told us she likes to play recognisable songs first, as if she kicks off with new material it can make people anxious! They come later in the set. She also told us the tale of landing in Wellington on the third attempt, having had to go back to Auckland after the first two failed…normal for Wellington. She introduced long-time collaborator Gerry Leonard on guitar, and cellist Stephanie Winters, who plays on most of the songs. They played a full repertoire from the very earliest song she wrote in the Seventies, through to excerpts of the new album (Flying With Angels), and finished up, inevitably, with probably her most famous, Tom’s Diner. 

They then reappeared for a three-song encore including Lou Reed’s Walk On the Wild Side, and In Liverpool, before wrapping up at – gosh! 9:15pm! Clearly she knows her audience and doesn’t want to keep them up past their bedtime!

  

Pho-Chick Sakes

What’s this? Another burger post? But Burger Wellington finished on Sunday! How can this be?

Well, some establishments are continuing to offer their burger to the end of August, or until stocks run out. Also, the five finalists in the competition are continuing with their burgers, before the final reckoning of best burger on…wait…today!

Before I get into that, however, a round-up of some misses. On Sunday, the last official day of the competition, I wanted to go to One80 to try Porteña!. No joy, however, because I couldn’t find a park on Oriental Parade, and I was under a little bit of time pressure. Ah well.

On the WOAP site page there’s a handy list of places still doing burgers, so I checked that, and today we went to Lazy Juan’s to try Marites; but Juan was feeling too lazy to cook. Possibly because he’s a finalist and is busy at the cook-off, but it wasn’t available. Nul points. We went down Dixon Street to try another well-favoured burger at The Old Quarter – Squeal The Deal – but there was a fifteen minute wait for a table…clearly it’s still very popular! Over the road, Pho Viet was enticingly half-empty, so we crossed and sat ourselves down there. I ordered the Pho-Chick Sakes burger, while Nicola had a duck pancake of monstrous proportions.

It's described on the Burger Wellington website like this: Buttermilk fried chicken thigh, with American cheese, South Asian pickled vegetables, Manuka honey-glazed bacon, iceberg lettuce, and smoked sesame yum yum sauce in a Volco coconut-infused milk brioche bun, with Thai fry seasoned chips and phở broth.

It looks like this: 

There’s no DVB beer match so I ordered a Tuatara Hazy Pale Ale to accompany it.

Straight away you can see you’re not eating this with your hands. Before I tucked in with the cutlery, I had a taste of the broth, which is a good, flavoursome accompaniment. The fries were well-cooked and well-seasoned. The burger was impressive! Lots of flavour, good crunch on the chicken, I didn’t mind the lettuce so much as I was pulling the burger apart anyway. The sauce had quite a kick to it – sweet and spicy. I didn’t notice any coconut in the bun, largely because I wasn’t looking for it, and the slice of cheese was only a few molecules thick, and could have been more generous. But all that aside, this was a tasty burger, and a good way to finish (? Who knows?) the competition. I’m scoring it 8/10, even though voting has closed and it won’t count for anything.

 

Dublin Drip

We’re coming in to the final stretch of Burger Wellington, and I have two opportunities to try burgers in the final weekend. I asked the WOAP Burger Wellington group over on Facebook – where I’ve also posted my reviews (in cut-down form – they don’t like blog posts so I’ve sent a shortened version) – for their advice. I specified what I wanted and narrowed it down to two burgers: Dublin Drip from The Green Man, and Mixed Messages from The Malthouse. These are two of Wellington’s oldest and finest pubs.

I went to The Green Man today, finding parking on Featherston Street and walking from there. First thing to note: The Green Man has the stickiest floor and carpet the world has ever known. Walking up to the bar made a noise as I unstuck each footstep, and when I tried to move the chair back from the table, it only came away with the most grudging of slurping sounds.

Their burger is called Dublin Drip, and is described thusly: Beef patty, with bacon, aged cheddar, stout-braised onion, wholegrain mustard, and whiskey peppercorn sauce in a Pōneke Bakery milk bun, with beef tallow roasted potatoes.

It looks like this:

There's no DVB beer match, so I chose a Tuatara Interstellar IPA to accompany. 

It looks like the picture on the website, although the bacon was a bit underdone. The sauce was in a small pot rather than a jug. I used it to dip the potatoes in. The burger itself was pick-upable, and was quite dry – no squirt of juices or sauce as is usual with many burgers. The onions were generous, but the cheese less so. The patty was quite thick, but not wide – it didn’t occupy the burger real estate to the full extent. This leaves bready edges with no burger meat, which is less than ideal. Make the patty a bit bigger, and maybe a bit thinner, to fit the burger to the available area (I don’t mind if you err on the generous side and overflow the bun, but being too small is a burger crime). The potatoes were…ordinary. Yes, they may have been beef tallow roasted, but not to any great effect. Some seasoning may have helped. The sauce itself was very forward on the whiskey flavour, but the peppercorns had done a vanishing act; there wasn’t even a hint of pepperiness.

Overall, not a flavour bomb, but a fairly standard burger. I can only score this 6/10.

 

Bird Is The Word

We’d finished bridge and decided we’d sample another local café, as we’ve covered most of the acceptable eateries on the peninsula. But we haven’t been to Scorch-O-Rama! Actually, we haven’t been there in yonks, but they know us anyway. Their Burger Wellington offering, The Bird Is The Word, is a chicken burger (did the name give it away?). It’s described on the WOAP website like this: Bourbon hot honey buttermilk fried chicken, with Fernglen Farm halloumi, Double Vision Brewing beer-caramelised onion, pickled red cabbage, chilli and apple coleslaw, and lemon and herb buttermilk drizzle in a milk bun, with duck fat roast potatoes and black garlic aioli.

It looks like this: 

The DVB beer match isn’t mentioned on the website, but they do have DVB’s Chillax. Except they’d run out…so I ended up with a Panhead Supercharger instead.

Now then people, pay attention: this is how you burger! I had to turn my phone to portrait orientation to photograph it because it was so tall! None of your false advertising here!

And the taste! This is how you burger! The crunch-encrusted chicken was sweet, juicy, flavourful…delicious! Sorry, I’m using so many exclamation marks because I just can’t help it! The slaw was crunchy and tasty. The caramelised onions – sweet, soft (looks ups synonyms for delicious), scrumptious! The sauce was good, and there was a generous part-melted slab of halloumi atop the chicken. The duck-fat-roasted chips (cos that’s what they were) were generous, sprinkled with crunchy bits and with a decent smear of black garlic aioli to dip into. And to top it off, literally, sticking out the top is a…yes, delicious!...spike of pork crackling.

There’s a lot going on in this burger, but the flavours all mix in without fighting each other. The portion is generous to a fault. Speaking of faults, I can’t really find any. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a 10 on our hands here!

That’s how you burger! 10/10!

 

Cray Cray

Another day with errands to run in the CBD, so I dropped in to The Dumpling Company for lunch, and to try their Burger Wellington offering, Cray Cray. As you might imagine, The Dumpling Company aren’t the sort of place that normally does burgers, but the description was intriguing: Wagyu beef and crawfish patty, with Kāpiti cheddar, mozzarella, cucumber, lettuce, nori, and garlic crawfish sauce in a brioche bun, with handcut fries and spicy langya dipping sauce.

It looks like this: 

There’s no DVB beer match, so I went for a Garage Project Beer instead.

First thing to note: yes, that’s a real crayfish on top. Secondly, that brioche bun had collapsed somewhat when I picked it up; although it did maintain integrity through until the end. The patty is beef, and the crayfish are surrounding it, rather than being a wagyu-and-crayfish patty which I’d been expecting. In retrospect, probably a better idea anyway, so this became your classic surf’n’turf burger. The sauce was there, but not particularly flavourful, and neither were the other accompaniments, so there wasn’t a strong Asian flavour to this burger, which I’d been expecting. The cucumber had been replaced by daikon, I think. The fries were thick and chunky, and the mayo had a hint of sichuan pepper to give that numby tingling sensation...not particularly strongly, which again was probably just as well. I tackled the crayfish at the end, to no great reward, possibly due to my lack of patience.

I felt that this burger over-promised and under-delivered. The core concept was good, but it needed a bit more spice, a bit more energy, to really pull it off. I’m scoring it 6/10.

 

Seaside Sichuan Deluxe

It’s the weekend! Which means Little Sprig in Seatoun is open at lunchtime. We go there regularly anyway, so I thought we’d give their burger a try today. It's called Seaside Sichuan Deluxe, and the Burger Wellington website describes it like this: Double beef patties, with gruyère, Sichuan sauce, rocket, carrot, red cabbage, red pepper, coriander, and spring onion in a Cottage Lane brioche bun, with straight-cut fries.

It looks like this: 

This is the picture from the website, as I forgot to take one of my own! Unlike some previous offenders, however, this is a fair representation of what we actually got.

There’s no DVB beer match as Little Sprig is part of the Sprig & Fern group, which brews their own beer. I ordered a Nectaron instead – a citrussy IPA which I thought would complement the burger.

How was it? It’s a double patty burger with additional fillings which could have made the burger structurally unstable. I picked it up and it held together – the additional ingredients were finely shredded so didn’t cause slipperiness, and the burger maintained its integrity until the end. The Sichuan sauce was plentiful and gave that characteristic numbness that you get from Sichuan peppers. The patties had been well grilled, and the vegetables gave a bit of crunch and counterpoint to the burger and Sichuan sauce. The fries were served with Sichuan mayo. Overall, this is a very good burger, and I’m inclined to call it my best of the competition so far. My only teeny quibble is with the fries, which were OK, but not outstanding. That’s the only reason that this doesn’t get a 10. I’m scoring it 9/10.