Saturday 25 August 2012

Thursday August 23rd: A Splash of Color


Tonight was the annual Resene Color Awards, and this year it is back in Auckland meaning I can attend. As usual Resene did not disappoint when hosting a party. Our office entered one project for the awards, that I did help out a bit (not really), but it gave me the excuse to go along and pretend to be part of the team. We weren’t expecting much, especially since upon arriving some projects looked like they were designed with the sole intention of winning color awards. However, we won in our category as well as winning overall. This was awesome (and pretty surprising).  

Anyway, back to the important stuff, the food and drink.

The table of booze


When we arrive we were greeted by our Resene Rep, Simon Blincoe, on side note Simon is the man he remembers everyone by name and is awesome with his product. After a brief chat we were confronted with a table of booze (see photo). There were the usual merlots, savs and beers but also Verve was on the menu tonight. I stuck to beer tonight to try to look as manly as possible. The crowd I came with was pretty keen on drinking, most likely because there was a lack in events such as this lately.

The Whitebait Fritter
The food was a little slow to arrive, and there wasn’t as much of it as last time (at No1 on High Street). But there were a couple of outstanding nibbles. First off we were offered a whitebait fritter on a crusty toast base. It was topped with aioli. Some of my colleagues really enjoyed it. But I felt it was a little too fishy and needed a bit more citrus to tone it back. Lucky for me there was an ample amount of Heineken to wash it down with. Next up was a round of your typical deep fried samosas. These are the same potato filled ones you get at all of these. Don’t get me wrong samosas are delicious but they are pretty boring.

There was a break in the catering when the awards were presented, but that didn’t last too long and it was back into drinking after that.

Samosa
Due to our recent success we increased our drinking rate, which may have made the next lot of canapés seem even better than they actually were. Next, we had a chicken skewer with a sort of tangy BBQ sauce. It was really tasty from my recollection. This was followed by some deep fried crumbed thing with a soft centre. It didn’t really taste like anything to me, more like fried matter. But one of the guys I came with later informed me that it was a lamb thing. Anyway, it was ok once you dipped it into aioli.

Next up were lamb mini burgers. These were really good. The meat was juicy and the sauce was excellent. I had to have seconds (and thirds) of this burger. Lucky, one of the group managed to persuade the waitress to exclusively serve our group.



Overall the night was a fun night, the next morning, however wasn’t so fun for some of us.

Chicken Skewer
Lamb thing


Mini Burger (No2)
Additionally, the next day we had a special Friday night drinks, as one of my co-workers was leaving us. Our Administration Manager made these awesome gourmet sliders. There were three types, the first was a roast beef and gherkin one with horse radish. The second type was a smoked salmon one with capers and cream cheese. And thirdly there was a turkey and cranberry one.
Friday Night Sliders

I would have to say that these sliders were much better than most of the catered food made by professionals at most events.