I want to belatedly dump…

Shucks!
Thanks.

a pun at the tiller...
Life's a work in progress
This new show
'Psalm Enchanted Evening:
a liturgy of lies and laughs'
will be here all season.
(and on the net forever?)

You're a wonderful audience
and I seem to have taken you all home…

I had three hours sleep last night and this still made me laugh. I shall never again hear the Lord’s Prayer without a grin.

;- )

But seriously,
surely Russell could get you
a 'Feed Blog' Press Pass
so you can break bread
forgivingly with those…

Yeah – who do you have to kill?

I tend to avoid high-end restaurants as I find most do vegetarian food quite poorly…

The restaurant (under two names) that occupied the space now occupied by Bolaven (formally Bowman's and prior to that Chez Daniel (sp)) used to do a dessert that was assembled on the table. Apparently it was both…

As it says on the tin, pickled food is a big part of the experience. The cold crisp veggies…

While I am happy for expensive food to have an artistic impact, I really care more about its taste and the fact it can start entering…

In Christchurch, top joint for cheap'n'cheerful has to be The Bodhi Tree. As good as ever in their post-quake Ilam Rd home, I can report that a great…

With the time limit issue, I come back again to expectations. I have eaten at places that…

I've been there twice now with groups of Indian colleagues and everyone (except the vegetarians – duh!) speaks highly of that curry. Done 'Indian-hot' naturally. I can't wait to go back myself.

As it transpired, we left, a little bit chastened, and went and spent a bunch of hard-earned at the ever-delightful Mo's bar and swapped entertaining stories of epic customer service fails on the back of our Masu experience.

So we all had a great night – and…

My experience was much the same, except of the 6 dishes we had, only two could be described as divine, the other four were OK. But the service and atmosphere made the evening one I…

As we finished the last morsel of the tasting plate (outstanding) our cheerful waitress swooped in…

Fair point, and I’ll grant I was perhaps a tad on the unkind side. :)…

That's a little harsh, but if you look at the advertising in the front five pages, you'd have to say it's probably fair that Cuisine magazine makes their money from folks closer to the 1%.

But I don't think…

Absolutely. But not from me. My go to source for info on wtgn restaurants is Cuisine. And seriously I get to the capital maybe once every 5 years so how am I going to know.

So have at it, how do you track…

…admittedly my ‘to-die-for’ (and may yet) garlic-buttered oysters in the shell would’ve been after Madame Louise’s time, early ’80s.
I really needed one of those plates…

Honestly, I'm sorry to be that guy but I don't think it's "fussy" to…

It does – because, let's face it, if you're paying silver service prices it's not just for the food. It's for an agreeable evening in a pleasant environment with waiters who know the menu and…

Part of the fun of the exercise was to find the consensus; you should reasonably expect a good dining experience from the eateries in the intersection because…

This is so true. And it's a real problem for the restaurants trying to hit the highs and impress fussy reviewers or fussy scientists.

We recently took my father-in-law to The French cafe. It was the third time we'd been in 5 years and to be…

It definitely does happen. A crap service experience at Clooney, dull food at White and a terrible (and really expensive) Wagyu steak at Euro.

I mentioned the Clooney experience at a social media conference and…

Carl's Jnr GI! Prego would be the one, though. Cool and consistent since forever.

For me, it's about meeting or exceeding expectations, which is easier for the cheap-n-cheerful places to achieve. There's nothing more disappointing than to go to an expensive joint…

(Out of over 3800 in total)

"Takapuna Beach Cafe and Store";109
"Circus Circus Cafe";105
"The Fridge Cafe";101
"Depot Eatery and Oyster Bar";92
"Carl's Jr – St Johns/Glen Innes";92
"International Foodcourt";90
"Ponsonby International…

Isn't it the opposite ? The Cuisine list (sans Euro) is supported by either or both of Metro and Trip Advisor, so it is likely to be good.

I tried the revamped Cazador the other night, and I quite liked it overall. However the main dishes on our set menu all seemed to be variations on "here's a pile of game meat roasted rare and sliced thinly"…

Except that it’s a different set of reviewers coming to roughly the same conclusion. Also you get two reviews written by different people and that can help a huge amount when trying to figure out if you’ll actually enjoy eating there.…

I kept…