Jesse gets his money\u2019s worth from a fleeting visit to the capital.<\/p>\n
\n I complained recently that I couldn\u2019t 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\u2019t much better. I must have called
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat time does your kitchen close?\u201d I asked, trying to mask my desperation.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello Jesse,\u201d said the maitre d\u2019 as I entered. \u201cYour table is ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Highwater serves wine by the 70ml and 100ml pour, great for those who want to enjoy a drink but in smaller measures. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
I was relieved to see several groups in full flight around me (there\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t want to risk being over the limit) and wondered why more restaurants don\u2019t do this as a solution to the twin financial threats of reduced alcohol consumption and tight wallets.<\/p>\n
I took a little longer to warm to the food menu, which opened with a \u201csnacks\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m 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\u2019m going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but by the end of the night I\u2019d drunk more water than a 19-year-old at Rhythm and Vines.<\/p>\n
Highwater has a long, beautifully designed room dominated on one side by a bar and an open kitchen.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s focus on the good stuff: a really lovely selection of organic spring vegetables \u2013 radish, carrot, radicchio, cucumber \u2013 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 \u2013 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\u2019s cheese.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cdashi butter\u201d, which I didn\u2019t need all of for reasons discussed, but that beautiful fish only needed a lick of fat to make its delicate flavour sing.<\/p>\n
I was a little confused by the setup of the Szechuan steak tartare, which came with puffed tendons (hard to picture possibly \u2013 imagine those prawn crackers they used to hand out at Chinese restaurants) and iceberg lettuce leaves. It wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Highwater has a commitment to local, sustainable suppliers and ethical meat.<\/p>\n
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\u2019d usually spend but long enough to see that this is clearly a class operation, and a distinctly Wellington experience.<\/p>\n
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\u2019d met either of these two political icons, totems of the right and left. Both were thoroughly lovely in person and I felt like I\u2019d got my money\u2019s worth out of another fleeting visit to the capital.<\/p>\n
Address: 54 Cuba St, Wellington, 04 210 4420 <\/p>\n
From the menu: oysters $6-7 ea, crudites $18, endive salad $16, steak tartare $30, John Dory $55 <\/p>\n
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\u2019t delay.<\/p>\n
According to dining out editor Jesse Mulligan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jesse gets his money\u2019s worth from a fleeting visit to the capital. I complained recently that I couldn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1288,22503,156,11424,102463,71,6276,102461,2537,8526,102462,2538,111,139,69,2539,762,223,9863,5273,15900,19985],"class_list":["post-154146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-capital","tag-dining","tag-entertainment","tag-finds","tag-fleeting","tag-from","tag-gets","tag-highwater","tag-jesse","tag-latenight","tag-moneys","tag-mulligan","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-restaurant","tag-review","tag-the","tag-visit","tag-wait","tag-wellingtons","tag-worth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154146","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=154146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}