Entries Tagged 'Out and about' ↓

Some people might think going to the same restaurant all the time is pretty boring and not really making the most of city living or getting out of your comfort zone. We don’t care and this is not our experience – we love going to Capitol and this is why:

• the food is excellent. Always.
• they know our names
• we often get our favourite table at the front in the window
• the Head Chef stops by our table for a quick chat (surely that’s a sign you’ve ‘made it’ if the chef comes out to see you when you dine in their restaurant?!)
• we always get wine in the special big glasses
• if I order whatever it is that has whitebait on it, without the whitebait, the whitebait comes out in a little side dish from the chef for The Mister
• I am happy to go there on my own, the staff take turns at chatting with me to keep me company
• we’re never made to feel bad if there’s a huge line of people waiting and we’re almost done
• on special occasions we’re allowed to ring up with advance warning of a visit as strictly not allowed to make a reservation but we’re welcome to give a head’s up
• sometimes, if I’m really lucky and if the menu doesn’t have anything on it that I like (actually has only happened once) they’ll do a special sauce to go with the pasta, just for me
• did I mention the food. Consistently delicious and is just as it says on the menu.

Last night I took a rare break from the risotto currently on the menu (pumpkin and mascarpone) and had leek ravioli, without the whitebait, and it was divine. They do the best beurre blanc I’ve ever had, just a tad on the lemony side which doesn’t make if feel so naughty. Because let’s face it, that’s a lot of melted butter to eat in one sitting.

Capitol, 10 Kent Terrace, Wellington

Love this photo taken of the 4 of us outside Customs Brew Bar yesterday after a morning sampling coffee just before Bev and Dan got back on the plane home to San Francisco.

(By the way, you’ll have noticed that we’ve switched to larger photos on the blog now – if this presents a problem (display, speed or otherwise) for anyone, please let me know.)

Last night we went to the second Ignite Wellington event – the first being the night before we left Wellington for New York back in March.

The aim of the evening is to get people enthusiastic about Wellington and about possibilities – people get up on stage and speak for exactly 5 minutes to exactly 20 slides. No matter their profession, their talk can be about that or some experience they’ve had or some random interest they have.

Last night’s event was great, and I rate it better than the first. People spoke about everything from starting their own company to selling real estate on the moon to outdoor graffiti knitting to wallpaper to game design. You can see the full list of speakers on the Ignite Wellington website plus a video of each talk.

In the talk about graffiti knitting there was a slide of the tree cozies and you can see the one I knitted!

I wrote down one thing from each speech – not necessarily something that sums up the presentation, but just something I liked or remembered.

• Tell your kids that Santa’s not real before it’s too late.
• Wellington has a leisure culture.
• Wellington has some ugly public spaces.
• Luck is an important factor between success and failure.
• Do something to stimulate your grey matter.
• I never want to finish the boat or I’ll have to find another expensive dream.
• I skate through life on a thin veneer of knowledge.
• If you’ve got a round logo then we’re working with you.
• Wallpaper is for every day, it’s not saved for best like the good dinner set.
• I’ve made a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days.
• Intellectual property is not just an idea, it has to have a place in the real world.
• Moon, Mars and Venus are the most popular locations for extra-terrestrial real estate.
• Our lives are lived in boxes and we experiment and play to learn the limits.

The next Ignite Wellington will be in another 6 months or so, open to anyone to speak or attend so go along for some thought provoking stuff.

Oh what an awful windy rainy day today, but determined to stick to our plan of trying a new cafe, this weekend it was to be Memphis Belle, I put on my gummies and hat and all other winter paraphernalia and we headed out.

A friend of ours was talking about Memphis Belle last weekend, we’d never heard of it, so looked it up and discovered it’s on Dixon Street just down from Cuba Mall in the toilet-end of the Oaks complex and is doing some single origin coffee in different styles (espresso, chemex etc).

The guys were wearing cool-dude hats, one of them a trilby (which we know means good coffee in New York) and they had a cabinet of baking, not all giant chocolate things so it was all looking good on first glance. There wasn’t a free seat in sight but by the time we’d ordered our flat whites and peanut butter cookie a little corner spot in the window freed up.

It was a really cool little place, great atmosphere, very smooth coffee (not beans I know (Flight from Napier) and I probably prefer the sweeter edge of Supreme still) and great baking – the peanut butter cookie brought tears to my eyes because it tasted almost like the ones I had in New York. It was cool sitting in the window watching the rain going every which way outside and people struggling to walk in a straight line.

They seem to have really great hours as well – we were there at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon and there was no loud counting of coins and no giant rolls of gladwrap on the counter or other signals that they were closing soon.

After doing the rounds of our CEO and other top management who live out of Wellington, through local staff who have kids and can’t drop plans at the last minute, we were called upon to represent Xero at the NZ Internet Industry Awards held at Parliament again this year.

Last year we got all dollied up and Xero won the Best Business Application award and The Mister gave a speech and we were photographed and crowded around and felt rather glamourous (previous posts: Awards at Parliament and Who are they?)

This year Xero didn’t enter the awards but as winners of one last year we had to present the award to this year’s winners in that category. The Mister didn’t have to make a speech, just stand on the spot and in manner of lady handing out the Oscar trophies, pass a certificate to each nominee as they came up on stage, then the award to the winner.

It’s always nice representing Xero and getting out there where people know the company because they’re investors or customers and to receive many compliments for the product and company overall. It’s incredible how many people know about it now and how amazing they all think it is to work there. Working hard inside the company, we often lose sight of that, so it was a good evening out. And the bite-sized pavlovas and lemon meringue pies served as Petit Fours were amazing!

Here’s a blurry photo from my phone.

And the official one of us from the NZ Internet Industry Awards website.

Have not been to Felix for coffee or lunch or dinner or anything for years! I lost my patience with the cafes along Wakefield Street some time ago when they all seemed to close so early on week nights meaning there was nothing cafe-ish in that part of town. Back in the day when I was at university Lido and City Limits (where Finc is now) used to stay open quite late and you could always get a hot chocolate and a piece of cheesecake on the way home from the movies after 10.30pm.

When Felix opened I went a few times because of the orange. Of course. Last night we had our apartment Body Corporate AGM on Cuba Street and decided that we’d give Finc a go for a quick, light cafe meal, but they were closed. Sigh. So Felix it was. The orange teddy bear light is still there and the orange roof

I had a bowl of minestrone with toasted ciabatta and The Mister had a burger. Both were excellent. It was a bit chilly in there, I could only see one heater, and as inviting as the bench seat long the windows or high stools around a communal table looked, they were just too cold to sit at being so close to the windows. So we sat at the back at the bar. Which was OK, we like sitting at the bar, except there were no foot rests on the stools or the bar and even The Mister’s feet didn’t touch the ground so you can imagine how high up in the air my feet were swinging! Wasn’t particularly comfortable but as we were there for a quick meal, it was over pretty quickly.

We might add it to the list of options for dinner on the way home when it gets a bit warmer.

We’ve been meaning to try the new Cuban cafe on Taranaki Street for ages, Cubita – one of those places that we always walk by on the way to the movies, always has people at the tables outside but we just never got around to it, until last Sunday.

It was packed, and it’s tiny, and felt like a totally different crowd of people – not sure how to explain that – I guess a bit like when you go to movies at a different cinema, and even though you don’t normally recognise people at your own movies, you feel like it’s all different people.

Their coffee is from beans imported from Cuba, so not fresh roasted in Wellington, however it held it’s own although had a slightly sticky flavour to it, almost like a burnt caramel taste. Not unpleasant but a taste I often associate with ‘bagged’ beans. We ordered lattes but after observing the giant cups they seemed to be serving to other people we doubled checked the cup size of the latte, and changed our order to flat white to get something ‘normal’. We also had a slice of carrot cake, well I ended up having most of it because there was some spice in it that made The Mister’s nose turn up at it, but being a sucker for cake, I persevered! Something like amaretto or marzipan or something slightly perfumey.

Being back in Wellington is turning out to be OK – we’re being careful not to play the comparison game.

So far we’ve seen nothing too different, so it feels as though nothing has changed so it feels like we’ve only been away a couple of weeks. That’s a bit sad if you think about it, kind of reduces our trip of a lifetime to nothing, but for now it’s working. And it’s surprisingly enveloping being surrounded by orange again.

Some things we’ve noticed or done around Wellington since being back:

• First coffee was at Customs Brew Bar
• Moore Wilson’s was just the same

• The guys at Fuel remembered our order after 4 months (Jessie was still there)
• The Telecom angle-sided building on Willis Street is coming along.

• There’s some large stadium being built by the Kilbirne/Miramar/airport round-about.
• Dinner at Capitol was fantastic. The pumpkin and sage risotto probably the best risotto I’ve had there. The restaurant was so quiet when we arrived (about 6.30) and we worried things weren’t going too well for them but within half an hour it was full and bustling as normal.

• I baked! Made some orange cupcakes … and realised just how much orange we have in our kitchen!

• Been out for pub-ish lunches twice as people want to welcome us back to work. Which was nice despite lunching at places with rather large pub-ish meals (however managed to get a plate of veg rustled up at the first place, and pate at the second – had to leave half of both but at least I ate something!).

• Back in my same room at work but different desk. The Mister is back in his same spot. Mine’s OK for now, a little public on the edge and I haven’t got myself set up with keyboard, monitor etc and I have a new person to look at.

• Trying to think about whether we want to start up the same routines or not, seems we have a reputation for routine which makes us seem boring I guess, but we did give in to Hell’s Pizza last night (god it was good) and Gotham on Saturday morning, main reason being to catch up with our Short Dark Friend.
• Our tan lines are still visible for now in the brief moments of time when long sleeves or socks are off. The Mister has been rather upset that everyone says I look tanned but he doesn’t – his watch and jandal lines are impressive.
• Am making superb coffee again! The first one was a bit gritty but after that, glorious smooth milk and lovely rich taste. And I was very chuffed when someone I don’t know very well saw a photo of coffees I’d made and thought the photo was taken at a cafe!

Sipping my last cappuccino from Saturdays Surf as I type – what a hole that’s going to leave in our lives! Who knew when we visited them for our first coffee back in March that we’d become regulars … well actually, I kind of had an inkling after tasting the coffee.

How time as flown by and we’ve gotten to know the guys and certainly don’t feel like non-surfer-dudes any more! We’ve taken our visitors there, have gone just about every day over the last 4 months, have watched the guys build up their little backyard and tried not to listen to their banter about arranging stuff in the new garden shed, tried to talk surf stuff, have got Saturdays Surf t-shirts, have gotten to know which surfer dudes make the best coffee, showed them Xero and have had some great coffee.

Behind the scenes I’ve also had to put up with The Mister miming being a surfer at his desk and saying “surf’s up” when he’s ready to go get coffee … and surprisingly he’s come with me to get the coffee every day except one so I hope that continues when we get back home!

So thanks Josh, Morgan, Mitch and most of all Casey for the welcome and the fantastic coffee. It was great having you as part of our daily New York life and of course when we come back we’ll be coming in to say hi.

Following true to our offer to take ingredients over to Cousin Grant’s flash kitchen to cook him dinner, we shopped, prepped and transported food, tinfoil, apron, salt, napkins and oil (it’s a New York bachelor pad after all) over to his apartment in Soho. He was away in London for the weekend so we had to let ourselves in and work out how to use the oven and locate dishes so that dinner would be on the table when he arrived back that night.

This presented the perfect opportunity for The Mister to try pulled pork. We’d got into a long conversation with a chef at Williams & Sonoma (kitchen store) a few weeks ago about it after going to the Madison Square BBQ Block Party and after that and the pulled pork he always orders at Morrell’s he was really wanting to try it.

So when Cousin Grant said he loved pulled pork there was no holding us back.

In a very cool cooking 2.0 experience, The Mister tweeted @EatMeaty – the butcher in Chelsea Market and asked if they had pork for making pulled pork and any advice. They responded and expected our visit on Sunday morning. Very cool.

It was great hanging out at Cousin Grant’s and using his kitchen – his place has central air (we were there one of the days of the heatwave when it was 39 degrees C outside), extremely sharp knives and a massive gas oven. Eventually we found the light switches, a casserole dish and some piggy salt & pepper shakers (felt kind of cruel putting them on the table but they were orange), and luckily we took a few other supplies of our own because everything I didn’t think he’d have, he didn’t!

We put the pork in the oven for 4 hours and enjoyed a nice cool quiet afternoon working.

The house smelled great! And Cousin Grant said so when he burst through the door right on dinner time. We toasted the family gathering with champagne, assembled the burgers with pulled pork and some caramelised onions I’d made the previous day and coleslaw I’d made that afternoon and sat down to an extremely delicious family dinner.

So now we have to set about finding BBQ sauce (not something you’d normally find in our pantry) and other tomato-based basting ingredients to try it at home ourselves. Perhaps our Thanksgiving Dinner this year will be a burger feast!