All About The Heat

Our final foray into Burger Wellington was to local brewery and bar, Double Vision Brewery. We went there last year and had a very nice coffee-infused burger, and this is, regrettably, the first time we’ve been back since. We really must go there more often! It’s a great little bar, and the beer is first-rate.

We went on a busy Sunday lunch but managed to find a table, and ordered two of their All About The Heat burgers. It’s described on the WOAP website like this:

Bacon and cheese stuffed wagyu beef patty with bacon jam, smoked cheese, pickles, lettuce and a housemade BBQ sauce (with your choice of spiciness) in a Shelly Bay Baker bun, with chips and housemade tomato sauce

It looks like this:

The Garage Project beer match is Tiny XPA, a non-alcoholic beer. Sod that for a game of soldiers, thought I, and went for one of DVB’s brews, the Big Hop Redemption.

The deal with this burger is that you can select the heat of the house-made barbecue sauce in the burger, and we both selected medium. In retrospect, we should probably have gone for hot, as I didn’t detect any spiciness. That aside, this is a tasty burger, as it should be with wagyu beef. The patty was generous, as was the slice of cheese, nice bacon jam; and it was pickupable, so I ate it in the traditional way. The chips were crispy and tasty, as was the house-made tomato sauce. This is one of the best burgers I’ve had in the competition, only beaten by Café Polo’s effort which was done with just a little more presentation. But I’m going to rate it the same, 9/10. Why not a 10? I’ve only given out 10s to absolutely remarkable burgers over the past years, and the gold standard is one I ate at Boulcott Street Bistro way back in 2012.

That wraps up our official burger shenanigans for this year. I say official, as some venues will continue to serve their burgers after the close of the competition, and of course the ultimate winner does so as well, so I may get the opportunity to try one or two more.  

Fromage & Fortune

We were at Mr. Go’s before going to see Lizzie, and I decided to try their burger. Mr. Go’s have won the Burger Wellington competition in the past so I thought they would have an interesting burger.

Their entry is called Fromage & Fortune, and is described on the WOAP website like this:

Xi'an style braised pork belly, pickled green chilli, peanuts and Kingsmeade Ngawi brie in a Cube Bakery rou jia mo bun

It looks like this: 

The Garage Project beer match is Red Dog, which is specifically brewed as a burger accompaniment, and is a tasty drop.

How was it? The pork was spicy and very tender, and atop the pork was the brie, which had been squashed and cooked. The bun was a bit different as well, the rou jia mo being a Chinese hamburger bun that’s crispy on the outside but soft in the middle. It wasn’t very big and there were no fries or other accompaniments. I wasn’t wholly convinced by this burger. It was OK, there was nothing wrong with it, but nothing really stood out. I gave it a rating of 6/10.

Lizzie The Musical

Lizzie Borden took an axe

and gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

she gave her father forty-one.

The infamous case of Lizzie Borden, who was tried and acquitted of the murder of her father and stepmother in 1893, is one that continues to intrigue. Whilst she was acquitted, no other killer was tried for the murders, and she was shunned for the rest of her life in the Massachusetts town of Fall River. An obvious topic for a musical!

 Nicola was on ushering duty at Circa Theatre, and with a 6:30 showtime we needed to get an early dinner. Once again, Mr. Go’s is the go-to place (do you see what I did there?) and they are also participating in Burger Wellington, so I had their Fromage & Fortune burger.

The show started slightly late as they had a technical hitch with the lighting, so 10 minutes after the advertised start we were ready to go. Lizzie is a rock opera musical, with four characters who are the (surviving) female characters in or adjacent to the Borden household. They’re supported by a five-piece band – drums, guitar, bass, keyboard and obligatory cello. They start by reciting the verse above, then each of the characters introduces herself. The show progresses – mostly musically, but with some spoken parts – as they describe the living conditions in the Borden household, with their father and stepmother. Andrew Borden was a noted miser, and, after remarrying following the death of his first wife, tensions arose in the family. Lizzie and her older sister still lived in the family home, and there are indications of abuse, possible incest, in one of the songs. The first half leads up to the bloody axe murder of Andrew and Mrs. Borden.

The second half focuses on the reactions of all the characters to the murders. It seems clear that Lizzie did do the murdering, but that the evidence is not necessarily pointing at her, particularly after the dress she was wearing is burnt. There’s a memorable song which must have been a delight to perform, called “What The Fuck Now, Lizzie?” sung by her sister. The trial follows, and possibly the only mis-step of the entire production: the band leader, keyboardist Hayden Taylor, has one line, and he fluffed it! He’s supposed to call out “Not Guilty!” as the verdict at the end of the trial, but came in too early, not waiting for the band’s music to completely fade. So what we heard was “<muffled> Guilty!” Bugger.

Anyway, true to life, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders, and the whole thing finishes with a flourish. They did an encore number of the forty whacks routine whilst taking their bows, to riotous applause.

 

 

Chickens Are Seoul Food

Burger Wellington is drawing to a close, and our opportunities for burgerisation are becoming fewer. I wanted to sample another local eatery, so, instead of making the burger-eating part of a wider outing, we made a special trip to our local beachfront café, Scorch-O-Rama in Scorching Bay.

Scorch-O-Rama does have the benefit of being open seven days a week – unlike many of the cafés  around Wellington, which have reduced hours, particularly in winter. We went on a Tuesday. Their burger is called Chickens Are Seoul Food, which pretty well flags what it’s going to be like: a Korean-flavoured chicken burger. It’s described on the WOAP website like this:

Korean buttermilk chicken with kimchi slaw, caramelised pineapple, and sticky honey spicy sauce in a Brezelmania charcoal bun, with squid chips.

It looks like this: 

There’s no Garage Project beer match, so I opted for local brewer Parrotdog’s Birdseye Hazy IPA instead.

As you can see, it’s in a charcoal bun. This only affects the colour, not the flavour, and it is quite a light, fluffy bun. Inside, the chicken thigh is covered in caramelised pineapple, and the kimchi slaw is underneath. This is again one to tackle with cutlery, not hands. I dug in. The generous portion of chicken is well spiced, and the kimchi gives a nice tang to counter the sweetness of the sticky sauce and the pineapple. There’s quite a chilli kick to the sauce as well. Instead of chips, it's served with polenta-crusted squid “chips”, which had been deep-fried. These are crunchy, perfectly-cooked sections of squid, which I really liked. This is a really well-put-together burger, and is one of my favourites of the competition so far. I scored it 8/10.

 

Cormac

OK, I’ve had it with burgers that don’t live up to expectations. Today we went to local joint Café Polo for their Burger Wellington offering, Cormac.

It’s described on the WOAP website like this:

Wagyu beef patty with smoked cheese, red onion, lettuce, jalapeño and pickle comeback sauce, and spiced carrot jam in a housemade 'carrot top' bun, with curly fries and sweet 'n' sour sauce

It looked like this: 

The Garage Project beer match was Red Dog, a red IPA with Japanese flavours designed to go well with a burger. It’s a tasty brew with a good, strong flavour. 

And yes, it delivered! The patty: big, filling the bun, juicy, cooked medium rare. The sauce and red onions were generously applied – so much so that the burger was a bit slippery, and I decided to go in with knife and fork rather than risk squirty burger syndrome – you know, when you bite into the burger and everything flies out the opposite side. There was a healthy portion of curly fries with accompanying sweet & sour sauce. Overall, a good combo, with a bit of heat coming from the jalapeno. Definitely a recommendation, and I’m scoring this one 9/10. Why not 10? The superfluous  lettuce and the unpickupability of the burger, otherwise this would be perfect.

OK, where to next? Who can challenge this hunk of beefy goodness?

The Lucky Dip

I’d spent the morning at Zealandia, helping train the new cohort of Visitor Experience volunteers, so by lunchtime I’d worked up an appetite. As is my custom, I went into town to hunt down a burger for lunch.

The Lucky Dip is Burger Liquor’s entry into the Burger Wellington competition. I’m an habitué of the establishment so I thought I’d give their effort a go. On the WOAP website it’s described like this:

Smashed beef patty with melted cheddar, pulled beef birria, onion, sambal pickles, and red pepper umami mayonnaise in a Brezelmania French bun, with a 'lucky dip' of either birria beef broth, queso or beef gravy.

Jump on the special Burger Liquor WOAP website and spin the virtual wheel to see which of the dips you'll get to enjoy with your burger. Every burger goes into the 'lucky dip' for burgers for a year at Burger Liquor

It looks like this: 

In order to do the ‘lucky dip’ to see which sauce you’re getting, and presumably also to enter the draw, you had to scan a QR code. I tried. I tried the one on the menu, and also the one on the table. Neither worked, so I guess I’m not in the draw. Null points. I made a manual selection of sauce by telling the waiter I’d have beef gravy.

I had the Garage Project beer match, which was Golden Path, first brewed as a burger accompaniment in 2019.  

This burger is a remarkable achievement…but sadly, not in a good way. Somehow, they’ve managed to suck the life out of a burger. The patty was flavourless and unseasoned; the beef birria was chewy. The pickles were the only thing in the bun that had any flavour. Chips aren’t included, so I ordered some to dip in the gravy, which was insipid. This burger is not as good as their regular burger, the Smokey, so you’d be better off ordering that instead. I scored it a dismal 4/10.

 

Sophisti-Cajun

We went to our usual Tuesday night quiz night at The Old Bailey. They’re participating in Burger Wellington as well, and their offering is called Sophisti-Cajun. I thought I’d give it a go.

It’s described on the Burger Wellington website as follows:

Beef patty with Swiss cheese, pickles, avocado, crispy Cajun onions, ketchup, mustard, and coriander sauce in a Brezelmania milk bun, with skin on Cajun fries

The Garage Project beer match is Good Shout, but I’d already ordered my usual Panhead Supercharger by that point, and the GP beer wasn’t offered by the staff.

It looked like this:

What can I say about it? There’s a bit too much going on. They’ve thrown the kitchen sink at this one, and it’s a mish-mash of flavours. To be honest, Cajun isn’t known for being a sophisticated cuisine, it’s more rustic in nature, so this burger was a bit of an oxymoron. There were too many flavours fighting each other. The only discernible heat, which I associate with Cajun, actually came from the chilli-dusted fries. Overall I thought this was an average burger, so I give it an average score: 5/10. 

On the plus side, we won the quiz.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles

It’s all gone a bit Sherlockian recently! Wellington Repertory Theatre are performing The Hound Of The Baskervilles at the Gryphon Theatre, so we went along. It was a Sunday matinee performance at 3:00pm, so we went for a late lunch at Concord.

I thought I’d booked us a table, but it turns out my fat fingers had hit the calendar a week from now, so there was no booking. This wasn’t a problem, as they had space at 1:30pm, but it did mean that they hadn’t got my message about reserving one of their Burger Wellington burgers for me! And guess what? Yup, they’d sold out. Bugger. I had a Caesar salad instead.

Gryphon Theatre is on Ghuznee Street, and Uncle Google reckoned that was a 14 minute walk away. I’m not sure what route Uncle Google was taking, because we covered it in a more realistic seven minutes.

The theatre was sold out, as the usher told us, so we were enjoined not to leave gaps of a seat between the groups, as they needed all the seats. The stage set was minimal, almost bare, with only a few chairs brought on as required from time to time. The script followed the original pretty faithfully, and keeping Dr. Watson as the main character rather than Holmes himself – indeed, for a substantial section in the middle of the play, Holmes is purportedly in London, not Devonshire. It is Watson who befriends Sir Henry Baskerville, and interrogates the other characters, sending his thoughts to Holmes in London by letter. Holmes does eventually turn up, and the pair of them instigate a plan to uncover the real reason why the hound is instilling such fear into the locale.

Yes, well, we all know how it ends, and they wrap up the plot in a no-nonsense fashion and return to London. We also wrapped up the plot and returned to Miramar.

The Game Is Afoot

Wellington On A Plate is in full swing, and as well as burgers there are other events. Some of these are free, walk-in and pay type affairs, but others need to be booked, and often sell out in a matter of minutes. The Game Is Afoot is one of the latter. It is described on the WOAP website thus:

Prepare to indulge in a culinary conundrum that leaves you pondering, ‘whodunnit?’. In this murder-mystery dinner like no other, held in the 19th-century home of the British High Commissioner, you'll discover the answers lie within the Residence’s chef Bet Cabrera’s carefully curated menu. Inspired by British novels by Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’, put your thinking cap on and solve the riddle while indulging in five courses complemented by wines from Johner Estate.

It's basically a murder mystery dinner, held at the British High Commissioner’s residence in Karori. The Commissioner is away, but during his absence, his cousin - Dobby Black - has been murdered…most foully! There are five suspects: the chef, the maid, the housekeeper, the gardener, and the barman. No butler, otherwise it’d be a shoo-in.

We arrived at 6:30 for cocktails in the vestibule: two cocktails where offered, the rosemary cyanide (basically a Bellini with rosemary) and a Holmes (whisky and orange syrup concoction), along with hors d’ouevres. We met some of the other guests, including one from Nicola’s orchestra; and also representatives from the Johner Estate vineyard in Gladstone, who were supplying the wines for the evening.

At seven o’clock our host, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Dines, introduced himself and explained what the dinner was about. We were directed to our seats (three tables of 10), each table named after a famous detective: Poirot, Sherlock, and our table, Wainthropp. In front of us was the menu: 

And the food looked like this:

 

The soup was cold

Pickled mussels

The candelabra

Fish course - blue cod

Cutlery engraved GR and ER

duck breast main course

A chocolate orange

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr De Mille

It was yummy.

As we made our way through the various courses, on occasion a wine glass was tapped to attract our attention and silence us, so that a clue could be read out by one of the assembled guests. There were five clues, each relating to a different suspect, giving information about their relationship with Black, and what their motivation for killing him might be. I was chosen to read out the third clue, relating why Tim the gardener was a suspect in the murder. I delivered it in my best Toastmasters voice, making eye contact around the room and imbuing the text with some drama!

After dinner, we were invited to inspect the study where the body had been found, to see if there were any additional clues. The chair was overturned, and there was a spilled wine glass on the desk…and, tellingly, there was also a spray gun for weedkiller left behind on the floor! This was all we needed to implicate the killer.

As we assembled in the drawing room for coffee and tea, each table was asked to give their thoughts on who was the culprit. We immediately pointed the finger at the gardener, and at this point our host, Lt. Col Dines, read to us from the recently-discovered diary of the gardener, which gave all the evidence that was needed to arrest Tim for the murder. 

The stunning denouement

That was about the end of it. We made our thank yous and goodbyes, and headed home.

Not Another Shucking Burger

I was in town for various reasons, so decided to have lunch in the CBD and try another burger. I consulted my Burger Wellington shortlist on the WOAP site and settled on The Hangar's Not Another Shucking Burger.

What’s that name all about? Well, what do you shuck? Oysters, of course! This is, in fact, an oyster burger. Who’da thought such a thing was possible?

It’s described on the WOAP website like this:

Fried oysters, pickles, slaw, pickled carrots and a housemade chilli, dill and yoghurt sauce in a brioche bun, with handcut paprika fries. And it looks like this:

 I opened it up to count the oysters inside…there are five: 

There’s no Garage Project beer match as The Hangar does not have an alcohol licence, so instead I had a ginger beer with it.

How did it taste? Looking at the description, you can see there’s a lot of strong flavours there. And looking at the picture, you can see that those oysters have been deeply fried. All of which led to…disappointment. It could have been deep-fried anything in those crunchy morsels – the oyster was completely overpowered by the strong flavours of the sauce, slaw, and pickles. If you’re going to fry oysters (and some people like them that way), you need a light batter, and you don’t want to lose the flavour of the oyster. This one, I’m afraid, failed in the execution. Still, the paprika fries were nice. I scored this a low 4/10.

 

Pass The Pig

Another lunchtime, another burger. This time I went local, for reasons, and chose The Larder, our favourite local café. Their offering this year is called Pass The Pig, and it’s described on the WOAP Burger Wellington site like this:

BBQ pork belly with coriander, pickled cucumber, chicken liver pâté, carrot, red chilli, star anise and roasted spiced peanuts in a Myrtle sourdough bun, with shoestring fries, and chilli, lime salt, and lemongrass mayonnaise.

It looks like this: 

The Garage Project beer match is Fugazi, which is a beer I’ve had before, and isn’t one of my favourites. I opted instead for a Double Vision Brewery Chillax XPA instead.

First up: this is a tasty dish! The pork belly is well rendered, so not chewy, and all the ingredients in the bun give it a crunchy, delicious flavour. Is it a burger, though? It’s more of a meat sandwich – the pork belly is whole, not formed into a patty (not sure how you’d do that anyway?). The shoestring fries were a little pale, but crispy and the mayo topped with chili and lime salt. The Myrtle bun was really good as well – Myrtle being Jacob’s other venture, a bakery in Mount Victoria. A satisfying meal, I scored it 7/10.

Nawabi Galouti

And they’re off! Yes, it’s time for Burger Wellington 2024, as part of Wellington On A Plate. As Elle, the big cheese of The Big Foody tours company, was coming down to Wellington, we decided to go to One80 Restaurant and try their burger. It was already on my shortlist, and many Wellington eateries are unfortunately not open on a Tuesday lunchtime, so my hand was somewhat forced. No matter...we headed up to the 7^th floor, and took a table with commanding views over Oriental Bay and Wellington Harbour, on a gloriously sunny day.

One80 restaurant in the Copthorne Hotel has a very good reputation for a hotel restaurant. Executive chef Chetan Pangam has been there for a number of years now, and delivers an Indian/French inspired menu. Last year, he won Burger Wellington with Goan Chicken Ros Pao. This year, they’re offering a lamb burger, Nawabi Galouti. It’s described on the WOAP website thus: 

Galouti lamb patty, pulled lamb shoulder filo cigar, lamb snow, ghee, coriander, Zany Zeus mint labneh, and chicory in a Clareville Bakery croissant bun, with gunpowder podi fries. The Garage Project beer match is Susegad – a hazy wheat beer flavoured with kokum. 

It looked like this: 

Chef Chetan was on hand to give us the background to the burger; Galouti is a lamb dish that was created in the 19^th century for Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. He had no teeth so couldn’t chew a traditional lamb dish, so his chefs invented a dish that was so tender that he could manage to eat it without the benefit of teeth. Accompanying the burger was gunpowder podi fries.

One of the benefits of winning the competition is that you can then work with Garage Project to design a beer to go with your next year’s entry, and that’s exactly what we’re drinking. Susegad is the Portuguese word for calm, and the essence of the beer is to complement and calm the spices in the burger. We were advised to try the beer with a squeeze of lemon juice in it, as this alters the flavour and helps the beer cut through the fattiness of the burger.

How was it all? It’s not a perfect burger. To start, the cigar was delicious – nice crisp filo, and tender meat inside. The croissant bun was quite dense, presumably in order to maintain its integrity, so I tackled this burger with a knife and fork rather than hands. The galouti lamb patty is ground very fine, as required by the Nawab…but here could have been left with a slightly coarser grind, to retain a bit of texture to the meat. We do, after all, have teeth. The lamb snow was made from the rendered fat from the pulled shoulder. The fries were crisp and flavoursome, and the spice in the patty, whilst subtle, gradually crept up on you. Overall, a well-flavoured start to this year’s burger journey with a good beer accompaniment. I scored it 7/10.

Guru Of Chai

Indian Ink are back in town with a new production at the Hannah Playhouse, Guru Of Chai. As it’s only on for a short run (1^st – 11^th August) I’d booked tickets for the Sunday matinee when they were first released, for fear of missing out. This was months ago.

At a much later date, Hutt Valley Orchestra decided that their next concert would be on the same day, at the same time. Nicola therefore missed out, as she is the mainstay of their viola section. I went instead with Elizabeth, and caught the bus into town as Nicola had the car. We arrived in plenty of time and took our seats in the theatre. The Hannah Playhouse, formerly home to Downstage Theatre Company, is now a tragically underused resource after Downstage went bust in 2013. It’s now owned by Wellington City Council, but they don’t do much with it.

Guru Of Chai is an older work from Jacob Rajan and Justin Lewis, the creative team behind Indian Ink, who have been responsible for such shows as Dirty Work, Paradise, or The Impermanence of Ice Cream, Mrs Krishnan’s Party, and The Pickle King, and all of which I’ve seen over the years. In this revival, Jacob plays all the characters, to the musical accompaniment provided by Adam Ogle on guitar and special effects.

The main character, Kuitsar, has a chai stand in the main railway station of Bangalore. There he meets seven sisters, abandoned by their father, who sing at his stand and earn more money than he does selling chai. They are menaced by Thumby (he has no thumbs), a henchman of the local crime lord, The Fakir, but are rescued by Officer Punchkin, a policeman who oversees the station. Punchkin then assumes a protective role as the sisters get older, and all but one get married. The youngest, Balna, stays at the station, and eventually Punchkin asks her to marry him. Balna refuses, and Punchkin is promoted away from the station. Eventually Balna meets a poet, Imran, and they get married and have a son, Little Imran. The story is spread over several years, but always narrated with humour by Chai-Wallah Kuitsar. There’s also a parrot, and Jacob wears his customary prosthetic teeth throughout, to get into character. It is, as always, hilariously funny until you get to the ending, when it all takes a very dark twist and becomes quite serious. Indian Ink don’t always do happy endings.

Another stunning show from Indian Ink, if you get the chance go and see it! Given their now international standing, It will almost certainly get to Australia, and may make it to the UK as well.