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.

Sweet Mid-Week Escape

And they’re off! Yes, once again, Wellington On A Plate season is upon us – delayed by a couple of months this year due to the covids. The format is as it was last year, with two weeks of WOAP menus in the first half of the month and two weeks of burgers in the second half. There are also special events running throughout, and it was to one of these that we went at lunchtime.

Carello Del Gelato have been providing gelato to Wellington’s Oriental Parade for a number of years, and we went along to a demonstration of gelato making. The ticket said “go to Coromandel St, Newtown” which was a bit odd, but I figured that’s where the manufactory process took place. Well, that used to be true, and there’s even still half of a sign there, but they abandoned that some time ago for better premises elsewhere. Then my phone rang. “Hi, this is Kat from Carello Del Gelato, it looks like the ticketing people have sent you to the wrong place!” Yes, they’d only just discovered this error so were busy phoning everyone to get them to come to the right place, i.e. their shop on Wellington’s waterfront. We hopped back in the car and through some deft manoeuvring through Newtown, made it to Oriental Parade a mere 15 minutes late. They hadn’t started the demo as they were still waiting for one other group to arrive.

Phew! What a palaver! Anyway, we were now ready to go through the gelato-making process with Nathan, the proprietor. First up, we made chocolate gelato, with milk, cream (mostly milk though), Dutch cocoa, chocolate chips, sugar and dextrose. The milk and cream were heated, and mixed with the other ingredients before being poured into the churner, which cools the mix to -8°C whilst aerating it so it doesn’t set into a solid block. We tasted the mixture beforehand, and found it to be quite sweet and chocolatey. Nathan assured us it would taste less so once frozen as you can’t taste so much when it’s cold. He invited us to name our individual pots so we could identify them later to take home, and stuck labels on our pots. I called mine Chocky McChockface, obviously.

Mixing the mixture

The complex process of pouring

Churning in action

Once it had churned to Nathan’s satisfaction (holding its shape and not having a shiny appearance) we tried the fresh gelato before consigning it to pots in the freezer.

Next up was strawberry sorbet. Made with frozen fresh strawberries which had been defrosted, and again, sugar and dextrose, a bit of fibre to give it some body, and a couple of other ingredients (maltodextrin was one) for technical reasons – stabiliser or some such. Again, this was poured into the churner – which works a lot faster than my freezer-cooled home ice cream maker, largely because it’s running an industrial refrigeration unit which needs to be water-cooled to stop it from overheating.

Once it had reached the correct consistency, we tried it, and again potted some (my batch was called Storbreez). We then had a bit of a chat about making and other flavours, giving the sorbet a little time to set in the freezer. The end product is much creamier than you might expect – people say it’s nothing like a sorbet that they’ve had before. Nathan contends that what they’ve had before is inferior, icy products that aren’t a true sorbet like he produces.

 

Strawberry  sorbet churning

Nathan pours a batch

At the end of the demo we had a quick look in the shop to see what other flavours they’re currently producing. As well as “normal” flavours (fruit, chocolate etc.) they have a charcoal sorbet (activated charcoal, coconut water), and a new flavour of cucumber, mint and lime, which I sampled. My previous attempts at cucumber sorbet have not been a resounding success so I’ll try again, and maybe add some dextrose instead of sugar, and lime juice to try to de-sweeten it. We finally grabbed our tubs (two each) and drove home to get them in the freezer. Looks like we’ll be having gelato and sorbet for pudding for the foreseeable future.

Richard III

Richard III is a long play by modern standards. The Bacchanals’ production at BATS Theatre therefore started early, at 7:00pm, to accommodate their 3-hour run time.

This posed a challenge for our dining arrangements, as we were going to be in a bit of a hurry. We booked Whitebait – the new restaurant opened by the owners of The White House, which closed last November. This is located on the new development of the Overseas Terminal in Wellington, and is an up-market (mainly) seafood restaurant. Wellington needs one of these since Martin Bosley’s establishment in the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club closed earlier last year. Fortunately the Overseas Terminal – or Clyde Quay as we should now call it – is only 5 minutes’ walk from BATS.

We got there promptly. The restaurant has a big glass-fronted dining room, which, given Wellington’s usual climate, doesn’t normally pose a problem. However, over the last few days Wellington has been basking in sunshine, so it was quite hot by the window.

Can you spot Nicola in here?

We both ordered cold starters – crab salad for me and stuffed courgette flowers for Nicola, followed by herb-crusted bluenose and roasted snapper. The fish was cooked to absolute perfection, with the segments just sliding apart. Having mentioned to the waitress our deadline at the beginning, we found ourselves with time for a dessert, so I had a strawberry cheesecake with basil sorbet, and Nicola had a rosewater sorbet with asti and strawberry meringue.

My verdict? It was all good. It was all well presented. But it wasn’t no Martin Bosley, and I think you get more bang for your buck from Ortega Fish Shack.

So, off we toddled to the BATS theatre. The production was being staged in the Dome part of the theatre, which is the largest performing space. The actors are all out on stage at the beginning, and from the look of it we may have been the only people there who weren’t friends or family of someone in the cast.   

The production was minimalist – some of the characters were in period costume, others in jeans or suits. The stage dressing consisted of a throne at one end, and a scaffolding tower at the other, from which some parts were staged. Otherwise, apart from a National Party election poster where the face of Richard had been stuck over that of John Key, there was no real decoration. A few rather heavy-handed references were also made to the recent election during the play.

All in all, it had a studenty, agit-prop feeling. There was a lot of overacting, shouty deliverance, and contrived expressions, which rather detracted from the performance. At times they seemed to be rather rushing through their lines, which actually I was thankful for, as it got us to the end quicker. Definitely not the best production of a Shakespeare play that I've seen.

We shall of course continue to patronise the BATS theatre ("you're not a bad little theatre for your size", roffle) but I think I might steer clear of The Bacchanals.

One80°

Andy and I hopped on a bus at lunchtime to go down to Oriental Parade, there to try One80°’s The Fast And The Curious Burger offering. After the disappointment of the meat sandwich at Vivant!, I had specifically checked all my remaining burger choices to ensure they had the word “patty” in them, to make sure we would be served an actual burger. As mentioned before there, are a variety of meats available in this year’s competition, but One80 are the only ones offering an ostrich burger, so I really had to try it.

One80 is on the 7^th floor at Oriental Parade, so has great views out over the harbour and city. The restaurant wasn’t busy, so we were able to secure a window seat with no problem. We had once again matched our burgers with Garage Project beers – myself with Pils ’n Thrills, and Andy with Angry Peaches. The burgers arrived open, with a good helping of what appeared to be twice-cooked hand-cut fries.

 I assembled the burger with the intention of eating it with my hands, but when I squashed it down there was some leakage from the aioli and beetroot chutney, so I decided not to risk my shirt and used a knife and fork instead.

What can I say? What a burger! The best that I’ve had so far, even eclipsing the Polo Café’s Oops! This Might Be A Boom burger of last week. I so wanted to score this a 10…but the inability to eat it with the hands, and also a slight mismatch in the amount of beetroot relish (too much, I felt) held it back from perfection. I’m not in the habit of awarding half marks, so this scored a 9. But it was a better 9 than the Polo Café’s burger.

 The chef was clearly proud of it too, and maybe he hasn’t been selling that many (being located slightly away from the traditional lunchtime areas of Wellington), because he came out of the kitchen to ask us how we’d enjoyed them. Anyway, we assured him that it was the best we'd had this year, so he was happy.

The Island

It was a warm sunny day, so we decided to take the ferry over to Matiu/Somes island for a picnic and see if we could spot any wildlife there. As a predator-free island, it is home to tuatara, weta and also has a thriving population of kakariki. We climbed up to the gun emplacements at the top of the island and organised our picnic there.

Afterwards we went for a walk around the island tracks, spotting some kakariki, but they didn't land so I was unable to snap them. No sign of any tuatara, and the weta are nocturnal, so I had to make do with seagulls and skinks instead.

The following week, I was back on the island, this time with work colleagues: my employer gives us one day per year to take as volunteer leave, and we had decided to use this to help out the DoC work on the island. There are no permanent staff on the island - they rely entirely on volunteer groups and individuals to get everything done, with one island ranger, Jo, who organises the volunteers. On arrival, we were given two tasks for the morning: transporting a load of gravel from the dock up to the Visitor Centre, where it was to be used for a new building project, and sorting the chopped-down branches from some recent tree clearing into sizes suitable for logs or woodchippings, removing shoots and twigs so that they would go into the machine. It was again a hot day, and by the time lunchtime came round we were ready for a rest and sit in the shade.

After lunch, we had a gentler time of it, clearing overhanging and encroaching foliage from the Western track. As we went along, our DoC organiser pointed out a tuatara on the slopes down from the track. Unfortunately I'd forgotten the ABC rule (Always Bring Camera) so was unable to get a picture of it. As we were clearing the pathway, Jo was also checking the bait boxes for signs of mice and rats, to ensure the island stays pest-free. Inside one box, she found a baby Giant Cook Strait weta - about an inch long. In the next box, there was a fully-grown individual of the same species. These grow to about 2 inches long, and are big, fat creatures. I held this one in my hand, and you can feel the weight of them - an unusual experience when holding an insect! She was carefully replaced in the box.

Whilst we were working, Andy had commented that there were a bunch of people in the water swimming on the far coast - we thought no more of it. But when we came to another gap in the trees, we saw that they weren't people, but dolphins...and a lot of them! There were around 100 dolphins in the pod, swimming into Wellington Harbour.

We finished up our work and waited around for the ferry back to Queen's Wharf. Whilst aboard the ferry, the captain announced that he was going to take a detour into Oriental Bay, because this was where the dolphins now were. Fortunately one of our gang had a proper camera with him and was able to get some decent shots of the dolphins, whilst my cameraphone pictures were a bit rubbish.

photo: Angus Veitch

photo: Angus Veitch

photo: Angus Veitch

photo: Angus Veitch

Wellington Triathlon

Nicola went to take part in the Wellington triathlon on Saturday, which was being held in Oriental Bay. As you may know, a standard triathlon involves a 1.5km swim, a 40km cycle ride, and a 10km run. Here’s the cyclists doing their cycling thingy:

Nicola’s role in all this was not to compete, but to act as a marshall, keeping unwary pedestrians from crossing the road and being mown down by a horde of unstoppable cyclists.

Nicola indicates the direction from which cyclists may appear

Naturally, she went mad with the power of the high-visibility vest, and had to be forcibly restrained from setting up a secret HQ in an extinct volcano and assembling a private army of  minions and henchpersons.

It was a lovely day, so after we’d been back to the finish line to hand in the high-visibility vest, we went for lunch in a café on Oriental Parade – underneath the ill-fated White House restaurant, as it happens. There we had a happy lunch, accompanied (in my case) with a glass (or two) of Tuatara APA, or American Pale Ale, a distinctly hoppy brew. The rest of the day we spent idling about, as we can do in the last days of the Antipodean summer.

Name And Shame

We’ve been out for dinner at quite a few restaurants in Wellington. Some of these purport to be top-class dining...they certainly seem to be charging for it. And yet, they seem to get a few things wrong. Sometimes quite minor, sometimes fairly major.

Tonight, we went out for dinner at the White House Restaurant, on Oriental Parade. This is reputed to be one of the best restaurants in Wellington, and if you read their reviews and customer comments on Dineout you’d certainly think so. And, to be fair, it really should be one of the best restaurants in Wellington.

You can tell already, can’t you? Right, let’s get on with it: To begin with, we were seated and offered drinks. These came after about 10 minutes – an orange juice and a vodka & tonic…with plastic straws in them. Classy, eh?

Next up, we were served with amuses bouches in the form of snapper ceviche and cucumber jelly. Really quite nice. The waitress cleared the plates away:

“Did you enjoy your amuses bouches?”

“Yes” replied Nicola, “my bouche was very amused.”

“Never heard that one before” was the sarky comeback from the waitress.

The starters, when they arrived, were competently-seared scallops and a crab raviolo (described on the menu as ravioli, but we can’t all be experts in Italian, can we?...well, actually, if you’re running a top-class restaurant, you really should know this).

When the main courses arrived, they were tepid. They had clearly been sitting on the pass (get me with my restaurant terminology! A sure sign of spending too much time watching Masterchef) for a while as the purée had developed a crust. Things improved with the cheeseboard – we shared a plate of one English, one Spanish and three New Zealand cheeses, served with home-made (apparently) raisins and half a poached pear.

After tea and coffee, we found that it was gone eleven o’clock. So, over three and a half hours to serve a three-course meal. They must be watching the snails and tortoises whizz past in the kitchen. Thank god we didn’t go for the degustation menu – we’d still be sitting there come breakfast time at that rate.

So far, of four top-class restaurants that we’ve sampled, three have been found wanting in some respect. The only place we’ve been to so far that hasn’t cocked it up in some way is Matterhorn.

A Walk In The Park

Yesterday was a sunny, still day here in Wellington. The weatherman has promised us storms for tomorrow, and wet and windy weather for the rest of the week, so we took advantage of the lull before the storm and headed up into our back garden, also known as Wellington Botanical Gardens, which are just up the hill behind our flat.

There are several walks around the gardens, or you can just wander aimlessly. Although we set out to do the latter, we found ourselves unintentionally following the Sculpture Trail, with works by both local and international artists, including a Henry Moore.

We stopped off at the Lady Norwood rose garden, which is completely bare at this time of year, but should be more promising in a few months time. Take a look at this picture now and compare it to our next visit!

We also looked inside the Begonia House, which has tropical and subtropical plants growing in a classical Victorian-style glasshouse.

The herb garden was a bit bare as well at this time of year – hopefully it will spring into life more as the months progress, and I’ll be able to nip up there to grab a sprig of thyme or oregano for dinner. From the top we could see out to Oriental Bay, where some yachts were out – something that we hope to take up in the summer. 

Mount Victoria

On Saturday, seeing as it was a lovely sunny day, we decided to climb to the top of Mt. Victoria to the Lookout, to see what we could see. This was a novelty for me, less so of one for Nicola (who had already climbed it last time she was in Wellington, 4 years ago).

The way to Mt. Victoria is through Courtenay Place and up Majoribanks (sic) Street, so off we went, clad in jacket, jumper and shirt. By the time we reached the Charles Plimmer Park, jackets had been shed, and by the time we were at the top we were in t-shirts. This is no gentle ascent! There is a bus that will take you to the top, but it helpfully only runs Monday-Friday.

We took photos halfway up the ascent, 

and when we reached the top, 

when my camera’s batteries decided to give out on me. The views from the top are quite spectacular, across Oriental Bay and south across the Cook Strait to South Island (was that it visible on the horizon? Or just a cloud bank?) and beyond to Antarctica (not visible from this distance).

We decided to take an alternative route down, and promptly got “lost” in the forest, but eventually came out near Oriental Bay, and continued down by road.

Consumer Durables

Having been healthy all morning/lunchtime, we decided to increase our collection of consumer durables in the form of a Blu-Ray player. After much research I had selected the appropriate model (i.e. one that could, with a software modification, play our UK DVDs) and we trotted off to buy it from the only store that seemed to stock it in NZ…at least, I’d checked two shopping comparison sites and they both only listed one store.

We were then faced with an issue: how to check that it was working? Inevitably, we had to buy a Blu-Ray film, so we selected Inglourious Basterds, and watched it on Saturday night. We’ll find out whether the software code for UK DVDs works when our stuff arrives here – until then, we’ll be joining Fatso, NZ’s postal rental provider.