Viva\u2019s resident dining-out editor shares advice on New Year\u2019s Eve dining, and answers reader concerns about his health and identity.<\/p>\n
The roof\u2019s the limit<\/p>\n
\n My 18-year-old nephew, who is a confirmed foodie, is visiting Auckland from out of town. He is wondering where he and his girlfriend
\n should eat on New Year\u2019s Eve. I believe he is planning to hit one of us up for some vouchers for Christmas to make this happen. Any suggestions of places that would deliver a great foodie experience and are open New Year\u2019s Eve?\n <\/p>\n
Hi Andrea, what a great email, thanks so much for this exciting challenge.<\/p>\n
I think we have to send your nephew downtown so that he and his girlfriend get a bit of the NYE vibe on the way to and from the restaurant, with the possibility of ducking out just before midnight in time for the fireworks. <\/p>\n
How about a rooftop bar? It\u2019s got that element of specialness, it\u2019s very Auckland and several of them have special events on. I assumed it was a typo when Hi-So Rooftop at the So\/Hotel listed tickets to its party for $39, including a glass of bubbles, but it really is that cheap and the venue is great. It\u2019s only doing snack\/bar-style food but the quality is pretty high throughout that hotel. <\/p>\n
QT Rooftop has tickets starting at $115, which felt a bit more like what I was expecting price-wise. Depending on your budget, you could combine it with the wonderful restaurant Esther downstairs, which is doing two seatings and a special menu. <\/p>\n
Rooftop at QT Auckland has a ticketed New Year’s Eve event and is well located to see the midnight fireworks display from the Sky Tower. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
I really like The Churchill, which is 20 floors up at the top of Queen St. It\u2019s doing quite a high minimum spend ($300) but you might find they would have ended up spending that much anyway. Queens Rooftop may be the best choice of the lot, but its dinner service is already chocka on the night \u2013 look out for a ticketed event for later in the evening that it\u2019s due to announce this week.<\/p>\n
Getting home will be a nightmare (tell your son never to get in an unbranded car with a \u201cTaxi\u201d sign on the roof \u2013 they\u2019re unregulated, have no meters and will stick him with a shockingly high bill based on some opaque phone app when he gets to his destination). If they\u2019re going to be at a hotel bar anyway, maybe they should put the Uber money towards a room to crash in at the end of the night? <\/p>\n
Send him my best, Andrea.<\/p>\n
Queens Rooftop is set to announce its New Year’s Eve party plans soon. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
Healthy eating?<\/p>\n
Jesse, does your doctor read your reviews and does he comment on your diet?<\/p>\n
John, thank you for your questions and concerns. <\/p>\n
I am very frank with my doctor (a woman, John, no big deal) about my diet (solids and liquids), and though there are some changes she would make if she could, she gets that I\u2019m doing a job and can\u2019t be eating like Gandhi. <\/p>\n
\u201cDrinking alcohol is bad for your health but I want to have a life so I choose to live with the risk of having a glass of wine now and then,\u201d she said to me on the day I read out your email. You can see why I stick with her. <\/p>\n
In case you\u2019re really interested, I don\u2019t eat anything processed apart from the occasional bowl of crisps, I often don\u2019t finish the things I order in restaurants (I take them home with me for tomorrow\u2019s lunch), and I had 20 years as a vegetarian before I took up meat-eating and reviewing in the same month. Mind you, I spent 10 years as a pack-a-day smoker too. Why do I feel like someone at the Herald will be cutting and pasting this paragraph into my pre-obit? <\/p>\n
I enjoy reading your restaurant reviews and I do read TripAdvisor reviews sometimes too, then weigh up what can be a wide range of impressions, with the odd bit of self-aggrandising entertainment included. <\/p>\n
Regarding your own and other professional reviewer stories, I do wonder, though, how often you are spotted and specially treated as a person of great significance to the venue, with a resulting experience that may differ from that of the humble and not so humble public <\/p>\n
Marshall, hi. I get asked this question a lot, so I\u2019ve got the answer down pat. I am spotted perhaps just over half of the time (I can almost always tell), but by the time I walk in, it is too late for the restaurant to change the chef, the staff, the menu, the lighting, the music or the wine list. They can dial up the service (and always do), but even a waiter giving 110% can\u2019t fake deep knowledge of the menu or affect a charm they don\u2019t possess. <\/p>\n
My absolutely favourite thing is when a restaurant manager knows I\u2019m there reviewing and still lets his most junior waiter serve me because he has confidence in the training that person has been given. My least favourite thing is when I (quite commonly) get all the way to my table without being spotted, then some helpful customer tells one of the restaurant staff who I am and what I\u2019m likely up to. C\u2019mon readers, give me a break! I\u2019m working for you! <\/p>\n
What you\u2019ve asked, and what he\u2019s shared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Viva\u2019s resident dining-out editor shares advice on New Year\u2019s Eve dining, and answers reader concerns about his health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1443,1665,38864,51,10709,55604,22503,75514,32896,156,6461,2082,29419,6871,134,18558,78,2537,2538,117,111,139,69,42844,42775,10710,180,61,75513,540,1530],"class_list":["post-150819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-about","tag-advice","tag-answers","tag-auckland","tag-concerns","tag-deciding","tag-dining","tag-diningout","tag-editor","tag-entertainment","tag-eve","tag-for","tag-go","tag-has","tag-health","tag-identity","tag-in","tag-jesse","tag-mulligan","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-reader","tag-recommendations","tag-resident","tag-shares","tag-to","tag-vivas","tag-where","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}