Get Tipsy with Beth Brash in Pōneke Wellington
Forever “whooping and dancing from the sidelines”, Beth Brash is quite possibly the biggest cheerleader ever to have existed for Wellington’s food and drink scene. Having worked for the Wellington Culinary Events Trust for 10 years now, Beth ran Beervana for three years before stepping up to head up the annual behemoth of a festival Wellington on a Plate in its entirety.
Current go-tos for coffee
I live and work in the heart of Wellington, in Te Aro. I have so many great places to choose from for coffee so I’ll always mix it up. You’ll see me at either Customs (where I’m currently writing this!), Swimsuit or Volco.
Trends on the local coffee scene
The rise of the ‘small luxury’ – an influx of very high quality baked goods at the likes of Volco, Shelly Bay Baker, and Dough. You get that dopamine hit from treating yourself but without a large bill, which is testament to the current economic environment.
Rainy (or windy!) day hospo haven – somewhere you can get nice and cosy
Puffin – this wine bar is open seven days and it’s definitely a hospo hang out on Sundays and Mondays. Cosy plush booths, lots of intimate spaces to hide in. Great evolving list of wines, perfectly curated beers and cocktails, and excellent snacks.
Puffin
A restaurant you go to for the bants with staff and fellow diners as much as for the excellent food and drink
LOVE this question, this is what I live for in hospitality and what inspired the theme for Wellington On a Plate this year - Food is Love. To me hospitality goes beyond the food and drink, a true human connection with the chef, front of house and your dining pals makes food taste better - it’s science. I adore sitting at the bar at Graze, It’s run by a husband and wife team, Max and Stina. They have genuine passion for what they do, great bants and delicious food; they’re just great humans.
Late night bites
KC Cafe – it’s a national treasure. It’s been in the Chan family for 26 years, and has an impressive 160 dishes on the menu. When you’ve been going there for years it’s hard not to default to your old faves but I’ll always play a bit of KC roulette and get something I’ve never tried before – always delicious, but with sometimes life threatening results.
Best for a big group dinner
Another great restaurant that has been in the family for generations, Dragons not only does a pumping yum cha at the weekend, it’s also a great place to go for big group dinners with big tables for 10 (with a lazy susan of course). It’s BYO, and there are plenty of shareable dishes - don’t sleep on the homemade tofu and chicken mince, and the fish-stuffed eggplant.
Cocktails to impress
Dees Place: a subterranean secret that doesn’t make itself known from the outside, but IYKYK. It's your favourite neighbourhood whisky bar with a focus on American whiskies and cocktails.
A favourite neighbourhood to mooch round with an appetite
Hutt Valley is our Dominion Road (ed: a hospo strip in Auckland famous for diverse cuisines). I have a Google map purely dedicated to restaurants out that way - Han River (Korean) and Bikaner (Indian chaat) are highlights, but I’ve still got so many more on the list to try.
Standout front of house staff
Ortega Fish Shack is the gold standard in Wellington. Davey and Kim greet you like old friends even if you’ve just met them. It’s that inexplicable magic of great service that you come away feeling as though you’ve paid for the privilege to hang out with cool people all night.
Ortega Fish Shack (photo by Mel Waite)
Three superb things you’ve eaten or drunk recently
Snails from Le Bouillon Bel Air. A relatively new offering in Wellington, this is a take on the traditional bouillon restaurants of Paris, which offer classic French cuisine in a fast and affordable manner. So of course I got the snails – when in Rome, or Paris, as they say.
Koji’s curry donut. This is easily my favourite bite of food in the city.
Porcini - it’s hard to argue that Wellington isn’t the culinary capital when in the middle of the city, under pine trees you’ll find your meal for the night. Porcini and flat-leaf parsley are in wild abundance at this time of year.
Three places a visitor to Wellington should go to gain an appreciation for the city’s food culture
Floriditas - An all day restaurant institution, but hard to go past their brunch offering. So many dishes have been on the menu for a quarter of a decade.
Rita - Head chef and owner Kelda Haines once said that the daily menu at Rita is a conversation with the produce that day. I adore that. An ever changing menu, using whatever is fresh and best that day.
Graze - as mentioned above, but Max and Stina are quietly one of the most sustainable restaurants in New Zealand. The only thing not grown in New Zealand is sugar. The only meat the serve is spear caught butter fish, and they’re about as close to zero waste as you can. Quietly doing their bit and I love that.
Wellington’s food scene summed up in one line
We cant rely on good weather so we excel at the great indoors.
Rita
