Thursday December 10th: Merry Christmas

With the year coming to an end, Christmas parties have started to pop up. Last Thursday the firm I worked for had their Christmas party. Usually, we have awesome days out with a great lunch, but this year was different. It was our 25^th year as a practice and the Christmas party was to be combined with our anniversary party. At first I felt a ripped off, as our Christmas parties were awesome and something to look forward to, however I warmed up to the idea of the anniversary/Christmas party when I found out what was happening.

The Chicken Patty Thing, Held by my drinking partner in crime

The company had hired the old ‘6 pack’ silos down at Wynyard Quarter and cleaned them up for the night. In addition, there was a marquee put up beside them to house the 300 guests that were apparently invited. There was going to be some great catering and an ample amount of wine and beer.

Of course, because all out clients and consultants were also invited it meant that we had to be on good behaviour (well at least until they all left).

Mini Bruschetta

It was a good day on Thursday, it was sunny and warm and the sea breeze helped keep the place fresh. Upon arrival we were greeted with waiters handing out cocktails. The ‘Silo-tini” (the cocktail of the event) was a martini with a hit of lemon juice. It was pretty strong and to me very sour. I needed to down that quickly and move on to the other drinks available.

I kept to wine and beer for the rest of the night, drinking the Pinot Gris, until that ran out then moving to Heinekens. The food on offer was pretty top notch. The first dish that came around was a mini bagel with cream cheese and salami. It was ok, but sort of too big to have in one mouthful and quite hard to bite in half. Next were a few different variations of mini Yorkshire puddings with either rare beef on top or a grilled mushroom. These were (especially the mushroom ones) delicious. And due to their size you could really chow down on them.

Prawn Skewer, wrapped in basil, Silo-Tini in the background

After mingling a bit with some of my office colleagues and some randoms I had never seen before in my life, I had to go around and take photos of the event, something that was tasked to me…meaning I could not get totally inebriated or I would probably lose or break my camera. I did this for a bit before another round of canapé goodness.

Next on the menu were mini summer rolls, mini versions of the fresh spring rolls you can order at Vietnamese restaurants. They were ok, but if your been to a Vietnamese restaurant more than once your would have already had your fair share of these. After these mini rolls came mini bruschetta with a caramelized cherry tomato on the top. This was quite tasty and the tangy tomato mixed with a savoury paste which I couldn’t figure out what was made of was a great combination.

Mini Summer Roll

It was now well in the night and the sun had set, meaning it started to get cold. We all huddled into the marquee and continued to drink away. Feeling the beer kick in, I had to look for more food. I found a tray of little chicken patties with some sort of noodle thing on top. I assume they were pretty good, from what they looked like, but at this point my taste buds had almost decided to call it quits due to too much drinking.

By the end of the night, I was quite satisfied with the food and drink. There was plenty to go around and it was all pretty tasty (well at least the stuff I ate at the beginning of the night). The venue was done up very nicely as well. 

Thursday September 8th: No.1 High Street Launch

A shot of pumpkin soup

Ever since I can remember, there has been on-going construction work happening at what formally was known as Met Bar. And after about 2 years of listening to constant drilling and hammering, they finally re-opened their doors as a bar and restaurant called No.1 High Street.

To say thank you for putting up with the persistent noise coming from the construction, many of the tenants of the surrounding buildings were invited to their opening launch. And due to the close vicinity of the bar, a few of us from the office decided to go check it out.

Upon entering, we could tell that a lot of money had been put into the place, the place had totally transformed from what use to be a seedy club to something that looked pretty good.

For the night, there was a selection of wines and Heineken beer on offer. And after securing a table, we kicked off the drinking. The waiting staff were pretty good at encouraging us to sample their nibbles on offer, which was pretty good as I had built up an appetite. The first bite sized morsel that I had was a fried gnocchi with some sort of tangy plum relish on top. It was ok, but had a weird chewy texture. That however, didn’t stop me from having a few more when another round of them came by. Next was a pâté on toasted bread. This was a little intense for me, the pâté to bread ratio was way out of proportion. I needed a top of beer after I had that mouthful of liver. After a round or two of the regular meatballs on a stick came a tray of shot glasses filled with pumpkin soup. This was a little unexpected, and I wondered if they took a cue from the soup in shot glasses from the Engine Room marquee at Design Day. The soup was pretty ordinary but was good to wash down the after taste of pâté.

The Gnochi

The pate and bread ratio = bad 

At around 8pm, we had noticed that the room was starting to clear out, I thought it was probably a good time to leave, but then a colleague of mine decided it was actually time for a another round of drinks. So naturally I had to stay and keep them company. I was starting to feel the effects of alcohol kicking, which was great as it enhanced my taste buds making the next round of canapés extra tasty.

Chorizo sausage with date came next, and chorizo being my favourite sausage (coupled with drunken taste buds) made this toothpick meal super good. I had to have two of those, and being semi-drunk I didn’t feel embarrassed about. Then they started to get fancy. Next was shrimp salad with cantaloupe and cous lettuce…pretty hard out, but kinda hard to eat without cutlery. Unsurprisingly, I made a mess of myself. And then as a final dish before I departed, mini portions of chunky fries with a homemade aioli.

Chunky fries

The spread was defiantly impressive, but due to how close the restaurant is to my work, I’m probably unlikely to ever have lunch there.  I would probably pick the shrimp salad as a pretty notable  canapé to serve up on a free function like this.  

The shrimp salad

Chorizo and date combo

'Cloud' Nine on Canapes

Queen's Wharf & the 'Cloud'

Rugby World cup is only a month away now and Auckland’s party central is almost complete. As a thank you to all the contractors and consultants, there were drinks and canapés served in the ‘Cloud’ situated on Queens Wharf. Because I was involved in a bit of work on Queens Wharf (not the ‘Cloud’) I got to tag along. At first I was like this is great, finally a non-public opening the food is going to be great. But a few days before the night disaster struck.

First of all, I caught a cold and was put on Anti-Biotics. This meant no drinking on the night. Secondly, I was told by the big guys at my firm that there was an ulterior motive for bringing me a long. I had to take photos to document the night and the space. On a side note, myself and a girl I work, with have accidently become company photographers for a while now. For me, it was after I took a few photos on a company site visit which turned out not too bad. Anyway, back to the food… my cold meant I couldn’t drink and could hardly taste anything and my photography role meant I was almost entirely preoccupied the whole night taking photos of the building rather than enjoying delicious canapés.

The 'VIP' area, where the event took place

Quite an awesome space

I arrived with the some others from my office at around 4:30pm. The event was held at the northern most end of the ‘Cloud’, in the ‘VIP’ area. The area itself was pretty impressive, with a spectacular view out into the Harbour. You could see (and hear) ferries zip past on their way to Davenport. Although the interior had yet to be finished (see photos for the blue tarpaulin on the ground), I could tell that there were going to be some awesome parties come world cup.

A bar was made up serving wine, Monteiths, Steinlagers and of course Heinekens (this is probably the last time anything apart from Heineken beer will be seen on the wharf). Trays of finger food were scattered around the room, in a self-serve manner.

I started off with a few pieces of chicken sushi. Since sushi is already pretty tame in the flavour department, I pretty much couldn’t taste any of it. I always find it funny seeing sushi at events such as these, the giant wasabi ball always turns an un-appetizing grey and there are always only 3 sets of chop sticks. I then looked towards the bar to see if there was anything non-alcoholic. To my delight there was lemonade and real lemonade too.

Following my drink I had to go all over the wharf taking photos of the ‘Cloud’, the landscaping and furniture outside and the Shed 10 refurbishment.

Chilling out on the balcony

Finally, after going trigger happy with the camera I could get back to the appetizers. I tried out some of the more elaborate dishes next (unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the food as I was pre-occupied taking photos of the building). I had some crumbed gelatinous seafood thing, which was very interesting. Of course I couldn’t taste it, but it felt like chewing on jelly with chunky bits. Next was the typical bruschetta and meatballs on a stick. But what was new, were these mini tart things with some sort of cream cheese and roast beef topping. I could just make out through my minimal taste capacity that they were delicious.

So overall a good night for canapés, and next time I will endeavour to take a few snaps of the food.   

Mini Burger Monday

The firm that I work at has a very peculiar birthday tradition, where the birthday person brings the cake (or any baked goods) to share with the rest of the office. It’s kinda weird as it is usually that person who receives the treats rather than dispatching them. However, because everyone does it, it even outs and we get frequent little morning teas spread out through the year.

This Monday was one such day where someone had to bring the (baked) goods and share with the rest of us. But this time is was special. In addition to a cheese cake the birthday girl had also made mini burgers!! In my ranking of awesome food you get at a catered event mini burgers is pretty up there, probably just behind the mini asparagus rolls. So to see mini burgers at a Monday morning tea was a pretty big ordeal for me.

The burgers were pretty awesome, firstly, the bread buns were home-made. They weren’t chewy and were a great golden color, lasted great too. There were two types of meat filling, a small chicken patty or small slices of sausage. I thought the sausage was a good change from a regular patty, as the circumference of each slice was ideal for the miniature nature of the burger buns. They were conveniently bite sized and packed a lot of taste (see photo).

To top this off, there was another birthday on Wednesday. This time there were cakes. But having two birthday morning teas in one week has been brilliant. 

Thursday 12th May: Inlite NZ Launch Party

The Oysters

When it comes to good catering it seems that lighting companies are pretty awesome at it. Earlier this year we had a presentation from a lighting company, called Modus, about how they are bringing in We-Ef lighting products. When they came to show us their products they bought us lunch as well. It was good. There were chicken skewers, mini quesadillas, mini pies and a whole heap of other stuff. To top that off they bought desert too…little chocolate cakes and other sweet stuff. Bringing lunch is one but bringing desert for that free lunch is a whole new level.

Another lighting company called InLite (http://www.inlite.com.au/), had a launch party last Thursday for the launch of their New Zealand branch. We found out about it when one of my colleagues used their products for a project. One of InLite’s representatives came to our office to explain about what they could do for us, at the same time he dropped off a stack of invitations. On a side note, the guy was called Chris Watt…he was destined to work for a lighting company with a last name like that.

Filo Parcel

The event took place at Bubble, a bar on the Viaduct Harbour and following in the footsteps of other lighting companies there were canapés. As a few of my colleagues and I arrived at the opening, we were greeted by a tray of champagne flutes filled with Veuve Clicquot and we knew it was gonna be a good night.

Moments later I got my first canapé, a fresh oyster served with a tangy relish. It was delicious; the relish gave the oyster a sweet citrus flavour that was so much better than a simple squeeze of lemon juice. It was so good that by the end of the night I had eaten at least five of those.

After eating the oyster I caught up with my work friends and we then realised that this event was open bar. We decided to take it easy and just get what was on tap…Speight’s Summit Lager. However, one of my work colleagues decided he would reach the peak of this Summit and get trollied. But, he claims that no matter how much he drinks, drinking a can of coke just before he sleeps ensures that he will not be hung over the next day.

Later on (but before my work mate got drunk), I caught up with a few of my friends that I went to University with. We sat at a pretty sweet table where we were in the direct line of waiters bringing out fresh nibbles from the kitchen.

Next on the menu was deep fried filo parcels with a ricotta cheese filling. They were pretty tasty; however, it may have been because the dipping sauce it came with was really good. The same sauce was dished out with deep fried calamari. I am a fan of battered calamari so I guess I was already partial to giving the calamari a good review.

All the deep fried food had to be washed down with another glass of Summit Beer. I can’t decide whether Summit is actually a good beer or that the fact that it was free made it good, I guess I have to have a bought one to figure that out.

Meatballs

Being all refreshed I was ready for another round, this started with meat balls with a spicy tomato sauce. Usually meat balls are really good but I was kinda of disappointed at these one, they were dry, but because I was starving by the time they came I did eat four of five meat balls. Next was chicken skewers, these on the other hand were surprisingly good. The chicken was tender and juicy and the aioli that came with it topped it off.

All in all I think the event was a success and the catering was generally of a very high quality and me and my friends managed to convince one of the waitresses to just drop whole plates of nibbles at our table instead of walking around with the platter. 

Open bar is always a plus, and being greeted with champagne is a double plus. 

I hope the next event will be equally good or better.

Close but no d'oeuvre

A little while ago a colleague of mine got invited to the opening of Darby Street (a new shared space street in the centre of Auckland) this was partly due to the fact that she was an Urban Designer who had been working on another ‘Shared Space’ project in the Auckland CBD. Anyway, she asked me if I would like to tag along, and I of course agreed. Later on I heard that Len Brown (our current mayor) would be also be making an appearance, I thought to myself…this is great. Last time I was at an event with Len Brown (the Ground breaking of Wynyard Quarter’s Gateway Plaza) the food was pretty decent, probably due to his VIP presence.

But then I found out closer to the date that this opening was not going to be like a regular opening, there were not going to be waiters topping up your wine glasses and bringing around bite sized portions of deliciousness. Firstly, it was open to the public to attend, this means no catering. Naturally I was a little annoyed, but because I heard that there were going to be live bands playing, such as ‘Kidz in Space’, I thought what the hell.





The portable 'sculptures' and Kidz in Space doing their thing

We decided just to pop in in our lunch hour to see what was happening. ‘Kidz  in Space’ was doing their thing on a temporary stage that was erected at the Elliot Street end of Darby and portable ‘sculpture’ things were placed around (refer to photo). It was a pretty good atmosphere.
 

Luckily, the radio station ZM had their ice cream truck there and they were giving away free soft serve. Although it wasn’t a mini herb encrusted chicken breast roll with a cranberry relish, it was ok. Later I was given a free mini can of Coke Zero. They got the mini portion sizes right, but not the type of freebie!

The Soft Serve Truck

 The music was good and the ice cream ok, but I was still a tad disappointed at the lack of mini morsels of food. To top it off, I had recently had two wisdom teeth removed and today was going to be my big come back to the world of solid food, the Darby Street Opening was going to usher this in.

 Also to add to that, our receptionist was away today and yesterday, which made me question the likelihood of decent Friday night snacks. I was happily surprised at the presence of Sal’s pizza tonight though. So all in all my first non-soup meal after the removal of my back two teeth was greasy New York style pizza.  

Ode to the Friday Evening Drinks

Although, strictly speaking Friday Evening drinks is not really catering (as we get most of the food from the grocery store) I would still like to acknowledge the effort that our receptionist goes through to make us Archi Underlings look forward to the end of the week.

Our receptionist goes way beyond her job description when she carefully picks out and arranges the array of nibbles to accompany an end of week beer or wine. Come five o'clock every Friday we know we’re in for a treat.

I remember when I first started working at my current office, when I got the email on Friday saying that the nibbles and drinks are served, I tried to be polite and ease off looking like some starved animal. But now that I’ve been here for nearly two years and have witnessed a few of the older members plough in, my mentality has kinda shifted in regards to the nibbles. Now when I see "nibbles and drinks are ready" I take it as saying..."dinner is served"

Our Receptionist has been with us for seven months now and she is great. I'm not saying that our previous receptionists didn't do a good job, but our most current one makes a special effort to add a few nice touches to the array of snacks. Firstly, she makes dip for our potato crisps! (Spot the dip in the photo) Although it’s only onion soup powder and reduced cream, it still is delicious and none of our previous receptionists have been bothered to do so. However, what really is special is that on occasion she will make these skewers of cut fruit with marshmallows and cut up mars bars, they are awesome!

In addition, she will try to mix it up as well, remembering what we got last time she will try to find new things to order in, not neglecting the old favourites of course. So in addition to some camembert cheese and sundried tomatoes we might get something we haven’t seen before, like fruit spread that goes really well with blue vein cheese and crackers.

I must say I was initially quite impressed at the volume of alcohol that my work provided at drinks, but now the snacks are also equally as impressive.

Saturday 19th March: Urbis Design Day

In brief the Urbis Design Day is a day where designers of furniture, appliances, lighting and other things can kit out their studio space and show case their work for the public to see. For someone working in the field of ‘design’ you can usually get go to their show rooms and have a look, but for the general public this is a good opportunity to see what’s happening in New Zealand.

However, the real reason I went to Design Day is the food and drink.

The show rooms are spread around Auckland and special taxi vans are available to take you from venue to venue. Each venue, apart from show casing their designs, is catered. Although most of the places did their own in house catering, some of them had contracted a catering company.

The first venue that I arrived at was an exhibition run by Matter in conjunction with Automation Associates. I believe they were also sponsored by Absolut Vodka (or they just wanted to be different from the beer and wine of the other venues). Upon arrival guests were presented a Moscow Mule cocktail, nice touch, although for some reason they had doubled the vodka in the already ridiculously small cup of mine meaning I had mostly Moscow and little Mule.

After downing that Vodka water I decided to try to look half interested in what was on show. I was quickly side tracked by the mini cupcakes on trays. These were delicately decorated and looked great. I tried one that was chocolate with berry flavoured icing, it was delicious. A colleague of mine, also an Architectural Grad, had two cupcakes. The first was a chocolate mint one, which she describes as good, actually more like goooood (note the extra o’s) the second was a ginger crunch one which was not so good. All and all the cupcakes were pretty good. The company responsible for the cupcakes was called ‘Icing on the Cake’ (http://www.icingonthecake.co.nz/).

After a couple of more venues, mainly catered in house…such as a sausage sizzle done by Poggenpohl (don’t get me wrong the sausages were awesome but they weren’t the same as the cupcakes), I arrived at the Fisher and Paykel pavilion.

This was probably the (catering) highlight of the day. After rushing through a kitchen totally decked out with the latest and greatest of Fisher and Paykel white ware, you arrive at a temporary tensile pavilion in the middle of Britomart. Inside there were seven different tasting stations where you could sample canapés created by the restaurant ‘The Engine Room’ (http://www.engineroom.net.nz/). They had help from a catering company called: ‘The Great Catering Company’ (http://www.greatcatering.co.nz/) to man the stations and make sure your wine glasses weren’t empty - See picture of a friendly tasting station waiter above.

The first tasting station was a gazpacho (cold tomato based soup). It was very fresh and quite tasty. It wasn’t too tangy I didn’t taste just like tomato juice (which I thought it would do). Next up was a round of mini Horse radish and beetroot ice cream cones. These were very well made and the mini waffle cones were awesome. In addition, the ice cream was surprisingly delicious, almost cheese cake like. Next up was a little envelope filled with a Riesling flavoured sherbet. It was good, although I couldn’t make out the Riesling over the tang.

After resting for a bit and downing a couple of Heinekens, or Steinlager Pures…some green bottled beer, it was time for the next round. This started with a manuka honey injected fig. I was slightly disappointed by the lack of flavour in this one, although it could have been the alcohol dampening my taste buds. I could hardly taste the honey in the fig, but I guess the idea was good. After that I had a gingernut flavoured tea with an Earl Grey flavoured biscuit. This was a funny take on reversing flavours which turned out to be pretty successful. The last thing I ate was a toffee apple candy, which actually turned out to be the most disappointing of all the stations (apart from the station I accidently missed – some pastry thing). I could taste burnt toffee, even though I had beer taste buds (you know when you feel tipsy-ish and everything tastes awesome). In fact I had to throw away the candy and grab another mini ice cream cone to get rid of the taste in my mouth.

Moving on from the Fisher and Paykel pavilion, there wasn’t another venue that compared (catering wise) but some came close.

At the Kohler show room there was a chocolate fondue, one of those ones that come out of a fountain. This was provided by ‘The New Zealand Chocolate Fountain Experience’ (http://www.nzchocolatefondue.com/). It was pretty nice dipping in your marshmallows into the chocolaty goodness, but I must admit by the time I arrived at this venue I was half drunk and everything tasted like it was the best thing I’ve eaten. It would have been better if they had strawberries as well as marshmallows.

Of course other places provided the typical crackers and aged cheddar… beer and wine was flowing… I would definitely be going again next year, maybe next year I would have matured a bit and be more interested in the products on display. One regret that still bugs me is that I missed out on the Antipodes show room; I hear they had French pancakes made to order!! Oh well.

Best tasty morsel:            Mini horse radish and beetroot ice cream cones

Not to my liking:               Ginger crunch mini cupcake

Welcome To The Catering Code

My love of catering sprung from studying in Architecture School. I suppose the first event that kicked off my fascination with catered food was the 2006 Auckland Architecture week. That year I had participated in a design paper that teamed me up with others with the end result of creating a temporary bar for a night. The overall result was awesome and the catering was good on the night too. It opened my eyes to the world of miniature portions of super tasty food.

This led on to me getting involved with as many exhibitions and events as I could do. Later in my College career I got involved with another exhibition at St Paul's Street on reactive architecture which later was redone and represented at Te Papa in Wellington (unfortunately I had started working by then and couldn't take time off work to go to the opening) In 2008 I graduated from the University of Auckland School of Architecture and started working in an inner city architecture firm, I still kept a close relationship with the University so I would be informed of any upcoming exhibitions they were running...Grad shows seemed to always seemed to be well catered.

However, because the firm I am working for is of reasonable size (40 or so people) we get invited to quite a few product launch parties/building ground breakings and other catered events. Being a recent Graduate, with practically no other ‘real’ responsibilities (ie, children...) I try to attend as many of these as I can.

After attending a few Resene parties (which I must say, are the best catered events in Auckland Architecture) I found myself going on and on to my friends and colleagues about mini burgers and asparagus rolls. At one stage in the office, I probably talked more on catered food and going to events for free catered food more than architecture.

I have been asked why I don't just go into the hospitality business, my reply to that is that I don't want to cook or serve the delicious bite sized portions, I want to be on the receiving end of the serving. If I was in the kitchen I would probably eat myself to a triple bypass or, more likely, be fired before that happens.

As you can probably tell now I have no formal training in the food industry and everything I am definitely not a food critic I just like the food