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.

 

Fatuous Days And Crapulous Nights

Nicola has been playing with Sven Olsen’s Brutal Canadian Love Saga (known as “The Svens”) for a couple of years now, as part of their string section. They play live gigs every time there’s a Fringe Festival, and occasionally in between. None of them are called Sven, or Olsen, and none of them are Canadian. (A Canadian chap once turned up to one of their gigs, expecting something Canadian – Celine Dion covers, maybe?)

This gig, was, however, something a little different: the launch party for their pizza box. Say what? Yes, they have released a pizza box:

Inside there are six (count ‘em!) CDs with 63 songs in total, and a big book of lyrics so you can sing along with them! During their live shows there is a rear projection, animations and clips relating to the song, with some of the lyrics on it; but they are (a) often partly obscured by the band members and (b) aren’t always synchronised with the song (deliberately). So here are the undoubted, definitive, guaranteed words to such masterpieces as Kron Of Hastings. It comes with no page numbers or index, so finding your way around it is a haphazard journey through the minutiae of New Zealand life – much like The Svens themselves.

The launch party was in one of their usual venues, the Newtown Community Centre. Food and drink had been laid on, and t-shirts were also available for sale – Nicola and I both availed ourselves of these – as well as the pizza box itself, available for the bargain price of $50! So if you feel the need to dip your toe into the fantastic world of New Zealand’s most obscure pop orchestra, get in contact…they are a limited edition of only 250 (ours is #93), and Nigel Beckford (“Sven”) would dearly love to get them off his living-room floor.

They played a few songs, then broke for a “surprise event”. This, it turned out, was getting the entire audience up on the stage to re-enact the photograph on the cover of Wings’ Band On The Run album. I will no doubt reference this when it is published.

Afterwards we went for a “burger” at Mediterranean Foods.

Chilli-Butter-Beef

I’d finished training for the day, so headed home via the CBD. I’m a fan of Pickle & Pie normally, and I’d checked out their burger previously on the Burger Wellington website. I managed to park, if not Hollywood-style, a short two-minute walk from the venue. Let’s give it a try, I thought.

It was getting towards the end of the lunch shift, so less busy than usual. When I go there for tours it’s usually bustling, but that’s because it’s (a) mid-morning, and (b) mid-summer. No problem with being seated today! Their burger is called Chilli-Butter-Beef, and described simply: Conscious Valley smashed beef patty, with Mangaroa Farms butter crunch lettuce, Pickle & Pie dill pickles*, and chilli butter in a Dough Bakery brioche bun.

It looks like this:

There’s no DVB beer match, so I chose a Brew Moon Waipara New England IPA from their list.

It looks fine like that…until you pick it up, and realise that this is not a big burger – almost a slider, in fact. That said, all the ingredients were present, including the pointless lettuce (I had to tear a lot of it off to make it burger-shaped), and the chilli butter was definitely there, to give the burger a bit of a kick. Given its size, it was easily pick-upable – indeed, I felt like I was in one of those adverts for Carl’s Jr where the burger is dwarfed by the size of the hand. Crinkle-cut chips were crispy, and the dipping sauce on the side was presented in a lettuce leaf. This is a good, standard burger, so I’m awarding it a standard 5/10.

* Because, duh!

Porko Rokko

We’d been to Nicola’s band’s launch of their pizza box, and afterwards decided to go to Mediterranean Foods to sample their Burger Wellington offering. After the disappointment of The Portlander earlier in the day I needed something a bit better. Two burgers in one day? The sacrifices I make for this blog!

Their burger is called Porko Rokko, and is described on the Burger Wellington site like this: Porchetta, with apple sauce, salsa verde, and fennel coleslaw in a Shelly Bay Baker potato brioche bun.

It looks like this: 

There’s no DVB beer match, so I had a Parrotdog Bitterbitch instead.

Where does the name come from? Well, there was a folded-over leaflet on the table explaining: 

First off, it is immediately apparent that this is not a burger, it’s a meat sandwich. Can you bite through it? With the thickness of the slice of porchetta and the crackling surround I wasn’t even going to try – straight in with the cutlery for this one.

I’d ordered a side of chips but these turned out to be superfluous – the size and the richness of the burger meant that I left half of them. Because this turned out to be more than just a meat sandwich – this was a Sunday dinner in a bun. The pork was cooked and roasted to a soft texture, there was ample salsa verde, the slaw underneath gave a nice bit of crunch and acid to cut through the richness of the meat, and the crackling crackled. It was really quite good. I’m scoring this 7/10.

 

After Service

Portlander Restaurant is in Rydges Hotel Wellington, and is mainly a steak restaurant. They should be able to cook a burger, yes? I know I’ve had decent burgers from them in the past, so…

Their burger this year is called After Service, and it’s apparently what the chefs make for themselves after they’ve finished their shift. It’s described like this: Beef patty, with gouda, Swiss, provolone, smoked garlic butter, onion lace, pickled cucumber, iceberg lettuce, and truffle and black garlic mayonnaise in an Arobake milk bun, with potato gems and chicken gravy.

It looks like this: 

The DVB beer match is Loud And Clear.

Just for contrast, here’s the picture they put on the Burger Wellington website: 

This is a bit of a McDonaldsisation, if you ask me…quite a contrast between the picture and the delivered result! But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so how was it?

Bland.

Were there different cheeses in there? I couldn’t tell. There were some onions, and the pickled(?) cucumber, and even some sauce. It was pick-upable, so I duly ate it with my hands. The potato gems with gravy were crispy and golden, and were probably the best bit of the burger. The rest of it, though, felt like they’d phoned it in. And at $48 for the burger and beer combo, at the top end of pricing, my expectations were much higher. Not impressed by this one, I score it a lowly 4/10.

 

Public Service Announcements

Every three years, New Zealand has a General Election. And every three years, those cheeky chaps and chapesses at Circa Theatre produce a show called Public Service Announcements, where they satirise the current political parties and personalities. 

I’ve already told you about our dining experience at ChouChou, so straight in: there are six actors, and with costume changes they play the major characters of all the political parties (there are seven that are likely to feature in this year’s election), as well as impersonating commentators such as John Campbell, and Paul Henry – who has gone from commentator to participant in the election.

They signify who they’re playing with colour-coded jackets and lighting. Unfortunately, apart from the leaders of the main parties (and possibly not even those!), not everyone knows who’s who in the world of politics, especially if you haven’t been paying attention. To get around this they have to address each other like characters in a royal period drama: “Hail, third cousin Henry, heir to the earldom of Monmouthshire, how do thee fare?”, and suchlike. There is a plot of sorts, based around American warships blockading the Strait of Cook, and what each party is doing about it. The Americans are there because it’s a strait, and blockading straits is what they do. The characterisations are very basic, and the jokes aren’t all that funny. Being luvvies, of course, most of the mockery is aimed at the right of centre parties, although Chippie does come in for a pasting for not actually having any policies – he says he’ll release the Ultimate Policy “when the time is right”. Which isn’t now. There's a special guest appearance from The Top Girls, representing The TOP Party - as they seem to be special guesting in opinion polls at the moment.

Where it succeeds best is the song-and-dance routines – those tap lessons at Drama School weren’t wasted after all! There’s a rendition of "Things", “That’s A Māori”, a bit of Tears for Fears’ “Shout”, and other songs too modern for me to know the artistes. At one stage John Tamihere appears as a vampire, and his performance was so hammy that one of his co-actors corpsed on stage, and had real trouble delivering his lines with a straight face. He managed to pull it back together, despite the best efforts of Jamie McCaskill to distract him again.

It's a jolly romp, and has been extended for a week as it continues to sell out. Go see it while you can!

 

Onion Breath

Nicola was on ushering duty again at Circa Theatre, so we thought we’d go along and try their Burger Wellington offering before the show. When they first  opened I didn’t have a very high opinion of ChouChou, but they’ve improved somewhat in the intervening months, so I felt they should be able to do a good burger.

It’s called Onion Breath, and it’s described on the WOAP site like this: Beef patty, with sweet and spicy pickles, provolone, onion dip, and tobacco onion crisps in a Pōneke Bakery potato bun.

It looks like this: 

The DVB beer match is Chin-Wag, which I’ve tried before. It’s a fruity IPA flavoured with passionfruit and mango, and a good accompaniment to a rich burger.

How was it? It was served with a scattering of fries (not mentioned) which had been dusted with…something. The burger was their standard burger, and the melted provolone was present in abundance. The onions were…oniony. If you weren’t searching for it, you’d never have guessed the “tobacco” part, it was there as an extremely subtle background.

Pretty much an average burger with fried onions. I’m scoring this an average 5/10.

 

The Rice Age 2

Following on from Umami Sunrise, which was last year’s entry onto the Burger Wellington scene by local eatery, The Bento Bar. Not normally noted for burger-style food, this Japanese take-away has been around just over a year – presumably another of the many burgeoning hospo businesses catering to the ever-growing army of film- and game-related workers in this hi-tech hub. 

After bridge on Wednesday we eschewed our usual trip to Seatoun and decided to give this a try. Options for burgers on the peninsula are actually quite limited – The Larder aren’t doing one, Arcimboldi are just putting one of their schnitzels in a bun, and we’ve already tried Café Polo and DVB. However, this looks like an interesting choice.

The Rice Age 2 is described on Burger Wellington like this: Woody's Free Range Farm pork belly, with purple cabbage coleslaw, lettuce, soy-marinated egg, and red pickled ginger in a toasted sticky rice bun. They also say “Last year's rice burger generated real buzz with queues, an RNZ feature, and customers spreading the word. The Rice Age 2 is a playful sequel brought back because people kept asking.”

It looks like this:

It’s a takeaway bar, but they do have a couple of seats inside. Unfortunately we were unable to snaffle those, so we brought the burgers home instead. They’re unlicensed, so no DVB beer match with this one.

The bun is actually toasted sticky rice, and is quite dense. The pulled pork filling was tasty, and the slaw, pickled ginger and soy egg good accompaniments. With the rice there’s no need for chips or any additional carb, so I didn’t feel the lack of chips. My main gripe is with the ratio of filling to rice: there’s rather too much rice. In the attempt to make it more bun-like, the rice “buns” are actually quite thick; maybe making them thinner would have been the way to go? But then there wouldn’t have been much to these burgers, as they’re quite small to begin with. A conundrum to be faced next year, perhaps.

Anyway, it was a pleasant variation on the usual, but not one that I think will take off. I’m scoring it a worthy 6/10.

 

Rumour Has It

Another day with some errands to run in the CBD allowed us to partake of another burger from outside our usual milieu. After completing said errands we repaired to Kākāriki Coffee, which is on the site of the long-gone Trade Kitchen on Customhouse Quay. I’ve not been there because I’m no longer a denizen of this part of town.

Their burger is called Rumour Has It, and it’s described on the Burger Wellington site thus: Percik chicken, with toasted coconut ulam, Mightygreen microherbs, Lot Eight chilli olive oil, Apostle Saint Phillip Hot Sauce, and percik sauce in a curry laksa bun, with fries. The blurb also says “Chef Bobby spent two months in Malaysia tracing the best percik recipe, eating his way as far north as Kelantan, learning from local aunties by watching and talking. The burger is also designed to look like a mouth.”

It looks like this:

with prawn crackers...

or with chips

On the description it says “with fries” but they offered us the option of “with prawn crackers”, so we had one of each. There is no DVB beer match as they don't have a licence.

What is percik? It means “splashing” in Malaysian, and ayam percik is chicken that is basted in the sauce as it cooks. The sauce seems to consist of your generalised East Asian flavourings – ginger, garlic, onions, lemon grass, tamarind, coconut, turmeric, etc. All the recipes I looked at also included chili, but read on…

Firstly, the “burger”: this is a meat sandwich, not a burger. The curry laksa bun is folded over, rather than being in two separate pieces, and had a characteristic curry laksa flavour; it was a bit doughy, I found, but at least it was pick-upable and held its integrity until the end. The chicken inside was well cooked with a spicy crust. The ratio of chicken to bun was about right. The toasted coconut was very much in evidence. There was a salad, some say slaw, which presumably also included the advertised microgreens. The prawn crackers were, I suspect, not cooked in the kitchen, and the fries were pretty standard café fries – although both had what appeared to be a green curry sauce to dip in which wasn’t mentioned on the description.

What was missing, and what I really wanted, was some heat! If they’d used chilli oil and hot sauce it must’ve been in minute quantities. There was no chili in the laksa bun either…so whilst the other spicy flavours were there in abundance, I feel it needed at least a little kick of chilli to really make it zing. This is a burger that had great potential, and with just a couple of tweaks could have been something amazing. As it is, I’m scoring it a competent 6/10.

Edit: I've been corrected on Facebook, they do make their own prawn crackers daily. 

Viva Voce

This morning I took the first Forest Secrets tour at Zealandia. This is a new tour that concentrates on the plant life of Zealandia, its history and unusual features, particularly as they relate to New Zealand. Not my first tour, but the first! Hopefully there will be more to come.

Afterwards I took myself into town for some great reward. I’d been researching on the Burger Wellington site, mainly using as my search criteria “open on Sunday Lunchtime” and “DVB beer match” to find something tasty. I’d narrowed the search down to several in the Cuba Street vicinity, in case my first choice was too busy or said something daft like “we’re not doing that today”.

But they didn’t. I strode into Cuba Street Tavern, demanded a table, and ordered their burger and beer. It’s called Viva Voce – Latin for “by word of mouth”. The burger uses beef tongue and pork cheek - literally from the mouths of the animals. It’s described like this: Crispy pork cheek, with beef tongue bacon, gem lettuce, Thai basil, smoked cheese, kawakawa BBQ sauce, and sriracha in a housemade brioche bun, with Sichuan seasoned shoestring fries.

It looks like this: 

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “eeurgh! Pork cheeks!” and “eeurgh! Beef tongue!” Well, put those preconceptions aside, because this is bloody delicious! The pork is soft and falls apart beautifully – far more so than the pulled pork of other, lesser, pork-based burgers. If they didn’t tell you the bacon was made from beef tongue you wouldn’t know, but you would know that it’s delicious. The barbecue sauce is tasty. The heat comes from the sriracha, which somewhat  overshadowed the kawakawa flavouring. The Thai basil offered a different, distinctive note as well. The whole makes a tasty burger.

Was there any downside? Well, as usual, the inclusion of lettuce left me cold. It lacked pick-upability, so I dived straight in with the cutlery. Personally, I’d’ve left out the sriracha and let the kawakawa and Thai basil do the heavy lifting flavour-wise. The fries were standard shoestring, and had no discernible Sichuan seasoning that I could detect. But these are minor quibbles for what was otherwise an unexpected flavour bomb, and probably the best I’ve had so far. I’m scoring this 9/10.

Bite And Tell

This is a visit to the source…not of burgers, but of the beers that accompany the burgers for Burger Wellington. Yes, they’re all brewed locally (to me) right here in Miramar, and their bar is one of our regular haunts anyway, so off we popped to try their burger.

It’s called Bite And Tell, and it’s described on the WOAP website as such:

Beef patty, with pickled daikon, carrot and sesame coleslaw, cheddar, fresh chilli, fried shallots, and Sichuan sauce in a Shelly Bay Baker brioche bun.

It looks like this: 

And yes, there’s a beer match! It’s Loud And Clear IPA, which I’ve already tried...but as we’re actually in their bar I can get a pint of it, rather than a can, which is what other venues offer. Result!

How was it? Well, they already do a tasty burger, so this is just a variation on their usual patty. But it was a good one: there was the characteristic numbing sensation from the Sichuan sauce, some nice crunchiness from the slaw, a bite from the pickle, and the heat from the chili. The flavours combined rather than fought each other. Other points to note: a pick-upable burger (although the sauce did run all over my fingers), and also the chips at DVB are always quality – crunchy, chunky and golden. Overall I’d eat this burger any time, and I rate this a strong 9/10.

 

Green Eggs And Hamburger

It’s Day Four in the big burger house…

I’d been at Zealandia in the morning doing some training, so headed into town to one of my usual haunts, Burger Liquor, to try their Burger Wellington offering. Burgers are their business, so at least the burger should be good, yes?

Ha! Jokes! Of course the burger was good! Their burger is called Green Eggs And Hamburger, a reference to the book by Dr. Seuss. It’s described on the WOAP website like this: Conscious Valley smashed beef patty, with Supreme Coffee and Woody's Free Range Farm 'red-eye' ham jam, bread and butter pickles, and green peppercorn béarnaise in a Brezelmania potato bun.

It looks like this: 

The DVB beer match was Loud And Clear (DDH Bright IPA) – another WOAP Special. For those of you not up on the lingo, “bright” means “not hazy” (which so many beers, particularly IPAs, are these days), i.e. you can see through it to the other side.

There’s no fries served with this, so I ordered a portion of fat fries to accompany it.

First off, you can always pick a BL burger up, so it passes the first test. The burger is their standard beef burger, with which I am well familiar: nicely smashed, crispy round the edges, fuller in the middle. The green bit is what makes it different, though. I’m afraid the ham jam got somewhat lost in the overall flavour, but the green béarnaise, when it wasn’t dripping down my chin, was delicious – a nice bite of peppercorns to add flavour to the meat. Beef and pepper, of course, is a classic matchup, and yes, it works again here.

The beer is tasty, and can be tasted over and above the burger and sauce. A good combo here. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with this burger. I’m not going to score it mega-highly, though, as it is just a variation on their standard, with nothing really new or different about it. 7/10.

Buck Yeah, Clive!

We’d been playing our usual bridge game on Wednesday but, instead of repairing to our regular post-bridge haunt, Arcimboldi, we decided to head to Café Polo instead. Arcimboldi are doing a burger, much to my surprise, but it turns out it’s just their usual beef schnitzel in a bun, with potato salad instead of fries.

Café Polo are usually pretty reliable. This year’s burger is called Buck Yeah, Clive! Who is Clive? I dunno. It’s a venison patty with beetroot relish, so Nicola asked for one without the relish, if the chef could do this without being driven to suicide by the philistinism of his diners. It’s described on the Burger Wellington website like this:

Venison patty, with beetroot relish, smoked cheese, pickles, and red onion ketchup in a housemade sesame seed milk bun, with skin-on chunky chips.

It looks like this: 

There’s a DVB beer match: Schandalous (Shandy). Shandy? Who drinks that these days? But this is a fairly grown-up one, coming in at 4.4%, with a slight lemonade-y sweetness to it. More a lager top, I’d say. Again, this is one brewed specifically for Burger Wellington, 

Venison can be dry, but they’d avoided that here, and the burger was nice and moist. My main gripe is with the beetroot relish: it totally overpowered everything else in the burger. There was cheese; couldn’t taste it. There were onions; couldn’t taste 'em. There were pickles; yes, I could taste them. So this was a pickle-y, beetrooty flavoured sandwich with some protein added. Could’ve been anything, really. Less is more, people! Less is more!

The fries were café standard, nothing to write home about there. I didn't spot any with the skin still on. This was a pick-up-and-eat burger, and structural integrity held out until the end. The beer match was a waste of time – I might as well have been drinking soda water for all the flavour I could taste after that beetroot. So, my advice is: order it without the beetroot relish…Nicola definitely got the better deal here. You can thank me later. With these failings, I score this a 5/10.

Stout And About

I must be a sucker for punishment. Despite all I’ve said about the Old Bailey’s burgers in the past, here and here, I still decided to try this year’s offering at pub quiz.

Firstly, it isn’t a burger, it’s a meat sandwich…something about which I have railed in the past. Putting a piece of meat between two parts of a bun (phrasing!) doesn’t necessarily make it a burger, OK? On the Burger Wellington website it’s described like this: Stout-braised beef cheek, with Kāpiti aged cheddar, caramelised onion jam, pickles, lettuce, and horseradish cream in a Pōneke Bakery brioche bun, with stout gravy dip and fries.

It looks like this: 

There’s a DVB beer match – Chin-Wag (Fruited Hazy), created specifically for WOAP, so no details available on their website at time of writing. I decided to give it a try. As it says on the tin, it’s hazy, with mango and passionfruit flavours. It actually worked quite well with the richness of the beef.

In the past I’ve complained about them throwing the kitchen sink at their burgers. This year they’ve toned it down – there were only a couple of pickles, and the onion jam was a thin smear inside the top bun. The horseradish sauce had also been diluted so the flavour was recognisable, but not overpowering. The cheese? I didn’t really notice any cheese. The meat was slow-cooked and fell apart easily, and had a good flavour as you’d expect from beef cheeks. The chips were the usual OB chips, and the gravy provided some relief to the dryness (their chips can be a bit dry sometimes).

It's not a pick-upable burger, so had to be tackled with knife and fork. Anything that has a skewer to hold it together generally falls into this category.

Overall, a better effort than in previous years. I’m scoring this 6/10, due to the meat-sandwichness, average chips, lettuce, and unpick-upability.

Bovine Meets Coastline

And they’re off! Yes, once again Burger Wellington, the burger competition of Wellington On A Plate, has kicked off; this year for a three-week celebration of every way to put one food item in between two bits of bread…or something else, if the fancy takes you.

Over the past few years my forays into Burger Wellington have been fewer as I’ve tended to restrict myself to those available in the local vicinity. However, chance would have it that I have some errands to run in town on the very first day, so I thought I’d take myself to Pravda Café & Grill and avail myself of their offering, called Bovine Meets Coastline.

It’s described on the WOAP website thus:

Beef patty and prawn cutlets, with gruyère, cos lettuce, pickles, thermidor sauce, and Dijon aioli in an Arobake potato bap bun, with steak-cut fries and chipotle mayonnaise.

And it looks like this: 

There’s a Double Vision Brewing beer match as well, which happens to be one of my old favourites, so I had myself a glass of Chillax XPA to wash it down.

So, how was it? As usual the lettuce was surplus to requirements, I’d’ve preferred them to leave it out completely. The two sauces combined with the lettuce meant that this was a burger for eating with a knife and fork – the slipperiness factor was just too much for hands. The three prawns were on a skewer, so had to be removed from that before starting. Otherwise, this was a pretty well-made surf-n-turf burger.

The chips, though...I’d go to Pravda just for the chips. Crispy, crunchy, golden, delicious! With the chipotle (? I couldn’t detect any) mayo, they were fantastic. The beer is a good drop – DVB being our local brewery, I’m familiar with their range. I’ll have to look out to see if there are any special ones just for the festival.

Overall, a strong start, setting the standard for the rest. I’m scoring this 8/10.

 

French Film Festival

We returned to Wellington to find the French Film Festival in full swing. We made our selections from the programme and set about going to see some of them. They’re mostly shown at the smaller cinemas in the city – the three Lighthouses and Penthouse, with some at The Embassy. For some reason our local, the Roxy, doesn’t participate. Anyway, here’s what we saw:

The Stranger (L’Étranger): based on the novel by Albert Camus. I say “based on” (I‘ve never read it), but according to Nicola, it was a pretty faithful transliteration of the novel. Filmed entirely in black and white, it’s the kind of film that wins plaudits and awards in France (it did) and is roundly ignored by the rest of the world. Coming in at over two hours, the length of the film reflects the main character’s ennui and disengagement from the world. By the end, I knew how he felt.

The Musicians (Les Musiciens): A wealthy heiress, Astrid, has tracked down the final instrument of a quartet made by Stradivarius. She already owns the two violins and the viola, and acquires the cello at auction for £10.5 million (plus taxes). She then assembles a quartet of renowned musicians to play a previously-unheard piece which her late father had commissioned from a contemporary composer, specifically to be played when the last instrument was found. Naturally, all the musicians and the composer hate each other, or have unresolved past issues with each other and the piece itself. Astrid attempts to bring all this together with a looming deadline for the one, live, performance and recording of the piece. Quietly comedic in places, it comes to a predictably heartwarming end.

Leave One Day (Partir Un Jour): The winner of TV’s Top Chef has 14 days until her restaurant opens in Paris. She finds out she’s pregnant, and that her father has had a heart attack (his third) so goes to visit her parents in the rural truck-stop town where she grew up. Cue unresolved past boyfriends, family arguments, all the usual “city girl returns to country town” stuff. Inexplicably, everyone bursts into song at regular intervals. Most of the people in it are annoying.

De Gaulle: Tilting Iron (L’Âge De Fer): A big-budget, 2½ hour monstrosity about De Gaulle. And this is only Part 1! It follows De Gaulle’s early career, setbacks and triumphs, his adventures in Africa and difficulties being taken seriously by the British establishment during the Second Word War. The main set-piece is the battle of Bir Hakeim, which, according to the film was “won” exclusively by the Free French (it wasn’t). Simon Russell Beale is typecast as Winston Churchill for the third time in his career – presumably the money’s good. Look out for Part 2 later this year!

A Nun In the City (Doux Jésus): A nun from an enclosed nunnery has her health check-up and incurs a bang to the head, setting off a chain reaction which leads her to abandon the nunnery and go in search of a long-lost love, currently wanted for armed robbery. Along the way she discovers what’s been going on in the outside world for the last 20 years, talks to God, and gets involved in a police raid and a car chase. Yes, it’s a comedy.

Side note: Why change the name of the film? “Sweet Jesus!” is a perfectly good name for a film, and is uttered many times throughout by different characters.

Maigret And The Dead Lover (Maigret Et Le Mort Amoureux): Maigret is one of those subjects which must be approached with hushed reverence, lest you incur the wrath of the French nation. Whilst this has been updated to the 21^st century, very little of it impinges on the plot – there’s one mobile phone (2001 vintage) and a laptop used by a policeman, but the main characters don’t use them; they dress in old clothes, smoke pipes and cigars etc. At the end of the film Maigret comes up with a completely different explanation of events to the official version, but no evidence is offered, nor is his thought process to arrive there shown. Not sure what the point of that is.

The Richest Woman In The World (La Femme La Plus Riche Du Monde): This is a lightly fictionalised telling of the true story, the Bettencourt Affair, involving the heiress to the L’Oréal fortune. The names have been changed (Égoïste magazine becomes “Selfish” magazine), presumably due to lawyers etc. It’s largely about rich people behaving badly. There’s some French politics which extend back to WW2, who said what about Jewish people at the time. Meanwhile, the heiress is making very chaste whoopee with a flamboyant photographer, and spending the kids’ inheritance, much to everyone’s displeasure. According to the blurb it has “several twists too good to spoil”. Spoiler alert: no it doesn’t. It all gets settled out of court, and ends not with a bang but a whimper.

So that’s all the French films for the year. Some of them held my attention for a short while, but there wasn’t anything outstanding that I’d recommend from this year’s selections. One I wanted to see but missed was Redress– maybe it’ll come out on general release later. OK, when does the New Zealand International Film Festival start?

Julia

Back into the routine with Circa Theatre, and Nicola is volunteering as usher. This time it’s the acclaimed Julia, a one-woman tour de force written by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, whose works include Switzerland. The Julia in question is Julia Gillard, former prime minister of Australia. 

I hadn’t booked anywhere nice for dinner, so we were forced to go to Chou Chou. I’ve expressed my opinion on the restaurant attached to Circa before, but they have now revised their menu and offer some semblance of a reasonable choice…if only their wait staff would listen to the orders! Having been out for lunch after a French Film Festival offering, we weren’t that hungry, so Nicola ordered Caesar salad without chicken. Yes, you’ve guessed…they served it with chicken. They didn’t charge for it, though. Also, they were out of tiramisu, which you shouldn’t be early in the evening.

The play is 90 minutes long with no interval. Lara MacGregor has been a notable figure, both at Circa and elsewhere, including television (and not just Shortland Street!) and film. The plot follows the life of Julia Gillard, the pivotal moments in her childhood and adulthood that led to her becoming Australia’s 27^th, and first female, Prime Minister. It culminates with the speech given by Gillard in parliament in response to Tony Abbott’s attempts to use a political scandal about Twitter to bring down the then Labour government. The speech struck a nerve amongst Australians, and women around the world, and led to some small changes in how women were perceived and treated not just in politics but also in the wider world.

The play captures the challenges faced by Gillard and other women in politics, where the size of your arse or the cut of your jacket are treated as more important topics of debate than irrelevant things, like policy or philosophy. Hey ho. Go watch it and enjoy.

 

Island Hopping

When first we arrived in Croatia we booked an island tour – the Elaphiti Islands, close to Dubrovnik. However, my back rebelled, and we postponed it until Monday – our last full day here. Not quite such an early start for this one, as they requested we be at the dock at 9:00am. The marina isn’t far from our hotel, but it’s not on the No. 4 bus route, so we Ubered it instead. We hadn’t booked lunch originally and they’d told us we could order it on the day, but I was running out of cash so searched around in vain for an ATM near the marina. Usually there’s more ATMs around than fleas on a dog, but I could only locate one, and after a lengthy interaction “computer says no”.

We boarded the Rita, and were immediately offered a cherry rakia, which we politely declined. Not all of our fellow passengers did, though! Instead we had a peach tea. It turns out I needn’t have worried about having cash for the lunch as they were able to take cards anyway, so we did that. 

Our transport - Rita

First stop was the island of Lopud, where we stayed for three hours. This would have given us time to get to the other side of the island (about 30 mins walk each way), or explore the botanical gardens (closed for renovations. At the start of the tourist season. How!?!) After an espresso we wandered about, admired the church and monastery, explored some of the coastline, and came back for an ice cream. We also saw the now deserted and abandoned Grand Hotel, designed and built in the 1930s as a statement of modernism and kick-started tourism on the Dalmatian coast. It survived WW2 and the communist era, but not the Croatian war. The company went bankrupt in 2001, and since then it has stood empty. 

This still left us an hour to go, and by now the sun was over the yardarm, so I had a beer and idled about in the morning sun until it was time to reboard the Rita.

Ruins of the Grand Hotel

Wood carving in the church

We reboarded and were served our lunch – chicken or fish with potatoes and tomatoes. Doesn’t sound much, but it was yum. There was unlimited wine served with lunch but as we still had two islands to go in the sunshine I wasn’t inclined to take full advantage of this offer.

Next stop was for one hour on Ŝipan, which was much the same…and the final island of Koločep, where we’d been promised something which is in short supply in Croatia: a sandy beach! And there it was. We stripped down to our togs, and like New Zealanders marched purposefully into the sea. It wasn’t actually cold, although all the tame Europeans were standing knee-deep and shrieking like big girl’s blouses. We swam a bit dried off, then headed back to the boat.

The beach at Koločep

We sailed back the way we came, arriving at the marina around 530pm. We walked about five minutes to the shopping centre we’d been to a couple of days ago, so we could mooch off the wifi in the café we’d frequented, and order an Uber back to the hotel. It’s Italian night at the buffer restaurant so we’ll see what that’s like. Tomorrow we begin the long haul back to Wellington, so daily updates will now cease!  

 

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Another early start, another country…we’d booked a tour to Kravice waterfalls and Mostar. There are three options: standard tour, on a bus, up to 50 people; medium tour, midi bus, 18-25 people; or small group, up to 10 people; each priced accordingly. We opted for the mid-sized tour, but when the bus turned up, it was a small one, as only eight people had booked, so we were quids in already. As the first pick-up at 7:00am, we had the choice of seats, and picked the front with our driver and guide, Angelko, as this had the best views. We stopped off for three other couples – one from Norway, one from Ireland, and one from Australia, then set off. Our fellow tourees were not a sociable bunch, so we didn’t have much chat with them on the way. Angelko pointed out some interesting features along the road to the border to BiH, as it is abbreviated. This was fortunately not as arduous as the first crossing into Croatia, but we still had to do the facial recognition scan.

As we drove along, Angelko pointed out the road signs. These are in both Roman and Cyrillic scripts, but due to ongoing tensions between the two communities, many of the Cyrillic parts of the signs have been spraypainted, painted or taped over so that they are illegible or invisible. I guess this is done by the same sort of people who paint George crosses on roundabouts in the UK.

We headed straight to the waterfalls. These are picturesque, and we’d brought swimming gear, but when we got there no-one was swimming and the changing rooms weren’t immediately apparent, so we took pictures – including the fish in the lake and some strange insects, which turned out to be Beautiful Demoiselles (Calopteryx virgo meridionalis) – then sat down and had an ice cream instead. Then some people started swimming, we found out where the changing rooms were, but by then we’d decided we didn’t really have time any more, as we still had to ascend the 173 steps up the hill to the car park. There was supposed to be a road train but we’d not seen any sight of that either, so we slogged up the hill. Whilst there’s been some development here – a few cafés and stalls – a little more effort would go a long way. Angelko told us there was talk of a major hotel being sited there, but there’s objections from locals, and that may be an overdevelopment. 

Come here, little fishy!

One couple wanted to go to Medugorje, which had been an option on our trip, so we took a detour there. We didn’t have time for the full ascent of the mountain, so just stuck to the town. A service was in progress at the church, with loads of people sitting outside as it was full. The town itself is a temple to the gullible: loads of shops selling religious tat. Many people in wheelchairs were there, presumably to be cured. The whole place is a depressing reminder that people will believe anything. 

Bags of tat

Shoploads of it

The church is nice, though

A short drive away is Mostar. This is a city that featured heavily in news reports in the early nineties, being the scene of some of the main conflicts in the Balkan war of 1991-1995. There are several museums about the war in the own, but frankly we've had enough of grim stuff in Albania. Some of the buildings still bear the scars of that war. We spent three hours in the Old Town, including lunch at a restaurant recommended by Angelko - Foodhouse - where we also got a welcome drink (rakia – what else?) and complementary dessert (apple pie) as well as our choices of lunch – dolma and Ćevapcici. After lunch we wandered the Old Town, bought a turtle and an evil eye, and looked for but missed the divers who jump off the Old Bridge. They basically ask tourists for money, and when the pot reaches €50, they jump. What a way to make a living!    

The Old Bridge

 

Jewellery shops everywhere!

We had one more stop on the way back – the small medieval settlement of Počitelj, which has a fortress high on a hill. Again, we weren’t going to climb all the way to the top, so we admired it from afar. 

We then headed back through the border crossing, again being scanned. This whole area has a confusing number of border and currency arrangements: some are members of the EU, some are also in the Eurozone, some are not members of either, some are not members but use the euro together with their own currency, and some aren’t members of either but only use the euro anyway. There’s a word for this: Balkanisation. We were fortunate to be spending euros and getting change in euros (not a given – some places give change in the Bosnian Mark).

We made it back to the hotel by around 7:30pm, so we’d been out for over 12 hours. We found in our room yet another bottle of wine and a written apology about the cleaning! I mean, guys! Last night’s was enough! Oh well, waste not, want not…

On our Italian trip two years ago we visited Slovenia, so with today’s excursion we’ve now knocked off five of the seven former Yugoslav republics. Just Kosovo and Serbia left…unfortunately we’re not going to get to them on this visit.