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.