It was a gorgeous weekend, and we’d bought super early bird tickets (back in 2015) for the Wellington Food & Wine festival. Our tickets cost only $29.95 each, and came with three complimentary tasters (we had initially thought these were food tasters, but they are 40mL wine tasters worth $2.50 each), compared to $45 door sales ticket or $39.95 general admission tickets. Plus, the super early bird queue was MUCH shorter than the general admission queue. Win!
Your ticket doesn’t entitle you to anything but entry (and a small plastic “festival” wine glass that you can hang around your neck – surprisingly convenient for when your hands are occupied, but also doofy-looking). Which is rather pricey, considering food at the festival is not exactly cheap, either. Though it is a good way to sample some different restaurants that you’d long been “meaning to try”.
We were surprised and a little disappointed at how small the festival was – we counted a total of 8 food places, 10 if you count the cake/dessert stand and the gelato cart. We were less interested in the alcohol selections, but there were about 5 wine stalls, and a couple of beer and cider options. It doesn’t hold a candle to Taste of Auckland or even Auckland’s Seafood Festival, unfortunately, which are also considerably cheaper admission-wise.
First up for us was Afrika’s ostrich vatapa. Nicole had been tossing up whether to get the ostrich vatapa or crocodile gumbo (both $8), but the bits of crocodile looked so tiny she decided to go for ostrich (the crocodile did seem very popular though). You still don’t get a lot of ostrich, and it was tiny bit overcooked but overall a tasty and well-seasoned dish. The fried orgali (white stuff on the bottom) is similar to mashed potatoes, in case you’re wondering.
Next we got a tasting platter from Sushil’s Tasting Manna. Sushil is a Masterchef NZ contestant but neither of us watch Masterchef. We just got the platter because it sounded good. It came with 3 things: a chicken tikka rice burrito with a spicy kick to it; a beef panthras (left), and a vegetarian paneer croquette (right). All were pretty good, but nothing outstanding.
Demi had a spit roasted pork roll ($8) from the Bresolin stall. Crackling was also available, though not shown in the picture below. While not huge for its price, compared to other options it was substantial at the $8 cost. She said it was very tasty and filling, better than she could make, and especially liked the tangy apple sauce. The bread was soft and fresh too, definitely not store bought.
Nicole then grabbed a soft shell crab taco ($10) from the Crab Shack. This was her favourite food item of the day – a generous amount of crispy crab, with flavours that were delightful and not overpowering. This was possibly the most popular food stall with a very long line, but their systems were efficient and we got our food in a reasonable time. We subsequently found out that the soft shell crab taco is $10 on Crab Shack’s normal menu, so there’s really no reason to come to the festival to try this – the fried calamari ($8) was better value, as it’s cheaper (and smaller – but not by that much) than on their normal menu ($16). We didn’t get the calamari, but Nicole has tried it before at the Crab Shack itself.
We finished off with some gelato from Carello del Gelato ($6.5o for two flavours, $5 for one). We got feijoa sorbet and salted caramel gelato. The feijoa sorbet was delicious and full of feijoa goodness!
We went to the Saturday afternoon session, which was reasonably busy – enough people for the place to be buzzing, not so many that it was overly crowded (our photos are not a great indication of crowd sizes as we took them early on and we got in before most other people). Wait times were very reasonable all around. People with some foresight brought a picnic blanket to sit on and listen to the music on stage, but we weren’t as prepared. Seating was hard to find, except in the covered area which surprisingly was always quite free. ATMs are available, courtesy of ANZ – we didn’t use them so don’t know if they charge you extra fees to withdraw money. Quite a few places had EFTPOS anyway.
In all, it was a nice but rather expensive day out. We didn’t have very much and still ended up spending $106 between the two of us (and we’d already gotten the cheaper ticket options!). For that price, you might as well go to the Crab Shack and get a proper sit down meal, or go to one of Wellington’s food markets and eat to your heart’s delight! We’re not planning to go back next year, unless they fix the pricing to be more reasonable and up the number of participating restaurants.
eatWelly 