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.   

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.