Jesse gets his money’s worth from a fleeting visit to the capital.
I complained recently that I couldn’t find a kitchen open in Blenheim after 8.30pm but I was waiting to board an evening flight to our capital city recently and discovered things weren’t much better. I must have called
and texted 10 restaurants from the departure lounge but one by one they broke my heart. I was about to give up completely when somebody picked up the phone at Highwater, a bar-restaurant in lower Cuba St with flash photos and an appealing menu.
“What time does your kitchen close?” I asked, trying to mask my desperation.
A phone call upon touchdown confirmed they would indeed be able to cook for me, so I gave them a fake name, raced to my rental into the city, parked somewhere inconvenient and jogged to my destination.
“Hello Jesse,” said the maitre d’ as I entered. “Your table is ready.”
Highwater serves wine by the 70ml and 100ml pour, great for those who want to enjoy a drink but in smaller measures. Photo / Supplied
I was relieved to see several groups in full flight around me (there’s nothing worse than being the sole person keeping three kitchen hands from their families), and as the weather deteriorated outside, the interior glowed with warm revelry.
It’s a long, beautifully designed room dominated on one side by a bar then an open kitchen. Tables were lined up along the other wall and the customers that night were the usual Wellington mix of junior policy advisors and their well-heeled parents.
I immediately loved the drinks list, which has some unexpected offerings. I began with a refreshing sherry highball (fino and tonic), then perused the list of wines by the glass. I loved that they offered 70 and 100ml pours (I was driving back around the bays to my accommodation later and didn’t want to risk being over the limit) and wondered why more restaurants don’t do this as a solution to the twin financial threats of reduced alcohol consumption and tight wallets.
I took a little longer to warm to the food menu, which opened with a “snacks” section where two of the four options were bread. But I liked that they offered oysters with no minimum order and I got one of each: natural, miso butter-baked, and served with something called Gisborne yuzu vinegar sorbet, which I found disconcertingly creamy with the seafood but may well appeal to you.
I’m afraid the miso oyster was very salty and I also found some other dishes a little over-seasoned, so much so that I wondered if my own taste buds were playing up that night. The chefs at Highwater clearly know what they are doing, so I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but by the end of the night I’d drunk more water than a 19-year-old at Rhythm and Vines.
Highwater has a long, beautifully designed room dominated on one side by a bar and an open kitchen.
Let’s focus on the good stuff: a really lovely selection of organic spring vegetables – radish, carrot, radicchio, cucumber – served as crudites with a little drizzle of olive oil and a hapuka roe taramasalata buried under a layer of furikake, the Japanese dukkah. A beautifully generous endive salad was a highlight of the meal – each of perhaps 30 magenta leaves individually plucked and placed in the bowl with pear slices, then dressed and scattered with walnuts and snowy sheep’s cheese.
Chargrilled whole flounder might raise some eyebrows at $55 but it was a generous specimen and perfectly cooked, the bones preserving the moisture in the meat. It was slathered with “dashi butter”, which I didn’t need all of for reasons discussed, but that beautiful fish only needed a lick of fat to make its delicate flavour sing.
I was a little confused by the setup of the Szechuan steak tartare, which came with puffed tendons (hard to picture possibly – imagine those prawn crackers they used to hand out at Chinese restaurants) and iceberg lettuce leaves. It wasn’t clear to me how I was supposed to use each, and in what order and in what combination. Still, it all tasted good, and the spicy numbing pepper worked in place of the more traditional Tabasco.
Highwater has a commitment to local, sustainable suppliers and ethical meat.
Service is excellent and the produce really is wonderful, with a commitment to local, sustainable suppliers and ethical meat. Highwater opens on Saturdays for what looks like a fantastic brunch, and in between services the chefs keep themselves busy curing, fermenting and pickling seasonal titbits for the leaner months ahead. Thanks to flight delays and eating alone, I was in and out in an hour, shorter than I’d usually spend but long enough to see that this is clearly a class operation, and a distinctly Wellington experience.
Adding to that experience, I ran into Nicola Willis on the way to dinner and Tory Whanau on the way home. It was the first time I’d met either of these two political icons, totems of the right and left. Both were thoroughly lovely in person and I felt like I’d got my money’s worth out of another fleeting visit to the capital.
Address: 54 Cuba St, Wellington, 04 210 4420
From the menu: oysters $6-7 ea, crudites $18, endive salad $16, steak tartare $30, John Dory $55
Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Outstanding, don’t delay.
According to dining out editor Jesse Mulligan.