{"id":17077,"date":"2015-07-17T01:05:21","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T13:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=17077"},"modified":"2015-07-17T01:05:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T13:05:21","slug":"wellington-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2015\/07\/17\/wellington-bars\/","title":{"rendered":"Wellington bars, from inside and out"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Malthouse<\/a>
My former workplace, after serendipitous signage failure or inspired minor vandalism<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a (nearly) three-year sojourn among the (nearly) nine-to-fivers, I’m back bartending.1<\/sup><\/a><\/a>\u00a0Happily, I can report that this is still an excellent town in which to do so. Despite an increasingly-plausible2<\/sup><\/a><\/a> rivalry between a few centres, the sanest conclusion is that Wellington is (still, for now) the country’s best place for going out and having a beer. The established reputation\u00a0and<\/em> the potential challengers make it an easy target for muggle-media dispatches\u00a0\u2015\u00a0of which two recently caught my eye for their disconnect between how things look to their authors, and how they appear to\u00a0me<\/em>, a long-serving drinker and drink-server.<\/p>\n

\"'Wellington<\/a>
An article in the\u00a0Waikato Times, featuring my new workplace<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first \u2015\u00a0a travelogue-ish piece from Donna-Lee Biddle in the Waikato Times<\/em><\/a><\/a>\u00a0\u2015 is innocuous enough.\u00a0It’s a little overawed and awkward, but isn’t that basically all of us upon stepping into a new scene? Two minor details were a little jarring, though. The line that “plenty of brew bars have the brewing equipment on display” overstates things rather a lot, unfortunately, since we only have three<\/i> such places (one of which is very<\/em> recent)\u00a0and this is one area in which our “beer culture” is unambiguously bested by (at least) Auckland and Christchurch. It’d be unseemly to brag about the things you knew you were behind on.<\/p>\n

Weirder, though, was the doubled-up emphasis on Golding’s Free Dive as the after-work hangout of all the brewers in town. Which is firstly unfair\u00a0to all the\u00a0other<\/em> bars \u2015 this town’s beer drinkers are, in my experience, a more ecumenical lot who merrily wander about the place and could fairly be said to be “regulars” of multiple places \u2015 and<\/em> paints an unreal picture of brewers’ social lives. By and large, more’s the pity, they go\u00a0home<\/em>. They work stupidly long days which usually start at Unreasonable O’clock in the morning. And besides, they\u00a0make their own beer<\/em>, of which there’s always offcuts to take home, and the beer business is frankly\u00a0just not among those lucrative enough to support the habits and hobbies some others maintain. I wouldn’t want to give anyone the impression that any or all of our bars\u00a0are perpetually crammed with industry insiders. They’re more diverse and welcoming than that.<\/p>\n

More pernicious, however, was the nonsense in\u00a0Cuisine<\/em> magazine from David Burton,3<\/sup><\/a><\/a> who is to local food writing what Gordon McLauchlan is to local beer writing<\/a><\/a>: a dinosaur without the actual-dinosaur saving graces of being awesome and\/or extinct. His protracted whinge as to the state of beer-bar food bears basically zero resemblance to reality and does the City a real disservice. The anchor of his piece is this claim \u2015<\/p>\n

With each successive craft bar fit-out in Wellington, in has gone the deep-fryer, and out have come the bar snacks of old school Kiwi pubs, albeit this time in the guise of “dude food”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2015 which is manifest bollocks on multiple counts. For starters, let’s torpedo his overused “dude food”4<\/sup><\/a><\/a> forever, as a phrase. With\u00a0very<\/em> rare exceptions, food has neither genitals of its own nor opinions as to yours. This is a non-category for precisely the same reason that there is no such thing as “girls’ beer”.5<\/sup><\/a><\/a> People of various kinds enjoy things of various kinds. If you’ve been paid to spend time in restaurants for several decades and haven’t noticed that, just what the fuck\u00a0have<\/em> you paying attention to?<\/p>\n

\"Emerson's<\/a>
Beer with superfancy lunch. And whisky. Admittedly my beer-and-food photo collection is relatively rather lacking.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Secondly, deep-fryers are just machines. They can be used for bland stodge as much as for delicious interestingness; I’ll wager there’s one in most places he raves about. And anyway, he’s simply\u00a0wrong: Hashigo Zake and Golding’s lack them entirely and the former, especially,6<\/sup><\/a><\/a>\u00a0bends the usual notions of “pub food” quite dramatically<\/a><\/a> and has been around for yonks<\/em> in local subculture terms. It would’ve at least made for a fine counterexample \u2015 but instead he weirdly cites\u00a0The Hideaway<\/a><\/a>, a spot which is in no sense a craft beer bar; not by its own claims, or by its menu, or his own review<\/a><\/a>, or… anything.\u00a0And against his implied boast that the good-wine places are still exclusively the good-food ones, you need only look back to his notes from\u00a0Ortega Fish Shack:<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0a rightfully glowing review he\u00a0entirely<\/em> fails to even notice their\u00a0lengthy and mindful beer list<\/a>, which regularly gains beer-nerd praise (and isn’t the only top-end restaurant in town to do so).<\/p>\n

The simple fact is that David Burton just isn’t a “beer person”. And that’s\u00a0fine and fair. Not everyone has to like what I like as much as I like it. It becomes problematic, however, when he’s repeatedly tasked by editors to report on something he neither particularly knows nor especially cares about \u2015 and yet feels so free to pontificate despite those two factors. Donna-Lee Biddle might not yet<\/em> count herself a beer person, but her\u00a0mis-steps are the polar opposite; the tiniest stumblings of an open-minded and enthusiastic newcomer.<\/p>\n

‘Outsider’ writing is a necessary and excellent thing; a key part of bringing more outsiders\u00a0in<\/em>, if they find themselves keen. And there’ll be a lot more of it in the run-up to Beervana and then (later) during the annual Brewers’ Guild\u00a0awards season. I just hope it tends toward\u00a0the Donna-Lee kind and increasingly little comes from throwbacks like David.7<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>1:<\/strong> About which more in the next episode of the podcast, he says, getting very-slightly ahead of himself.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>2:<\/strong> If still prone to occasionally lapses in to mean-spirited-ness and badly-judged \/ poorly-executed humour. (Looking at you, Steve Plowman, on the latter<\/a>.)\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>3:<\/strong> Perhaps mercifully in this case, they don’t put their stuff online. Unless and until they tell me to take it down, though, here’s a vaguely-readable rendition<\/a> so you know I’m not misrepresenting the bastard, at least. \u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>4:<\/strong> Limiting myself to one easily-searchable location, he uses it for write-ups on Coene’s Provisions<\/a>, Crafters & Co.<\/a>, and San Fran<\/a>. Judging by the latter, we might have Tim Ward to blame for introducing him to the term.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>5:<\/strong> Note the careful apostrophe.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>6:<\/strong> As to the latter, you’d think he might’ve noticed while praising the bar and its surroundings \u2015 and feebly trying to coin the nickname “Little Portland”<\/a> for the area. But alas.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>7:<\/strong> And since I’ve put myself on first-name terms, I’ll close with a quiet smattering of applause for the “says Beth” and “said Scott” of Donna-Lee’s piece. The newspapery pratice of Last Names Only For Everything, like we’re stuck in some fucking Dickensian boys’ school, really grates on my brain.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a (nearly) three-year sojourn among the (nearly) nine-to-fivers, I’m back bartending.1\u00a0Happily, I can report that this is still an excellent town in which to do so. Despite an increasingly-plausible2 rivalry between a few centres, the sanest conclusion is that Wellington is (still, for now) the country’s best place for going out and having a … Continue reading Wellington bars, from inside and out<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-finds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6423,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2013\/12\/19\/10-breweries-in-wellington\/","url_meta":{"origin":17077,"position":0},"title":"Get your hand off it, Wellington","author":"Phil","date":"December 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This is indeed a great town to live in \u2014 in general, and especially in the going out for a drink or a dinner or a mooch or a movie senses. But a few things about Positively Wellington\u2019s recent ads begin to slip into the territory of the boorishly boastful\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rambles and rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rambles and rants","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/blahblah\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Absolutely Positively Wellington's 'Well Proud' ad, detail","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/APW-art12-cropped-banner.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/APW-art12-cropped-banner.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/APW-art12-cropped-banner.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/APW-art12-cropped-banner.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":191,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2004\/12\/25\/duvel\/","url_meta":{"origin":17077,"position":1},"title":"Duvel","author":"Phil","date":"December 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"So. This is perhaps the best example why the decision to publish the 'ancient' Diary entries as-is was a bit of a Zen exercise. I like Duvel a lot, for inherent and circumstantial reasons. I have done so since I first had it, here on Christmas Day in 2004. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Duvel","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Duvel-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":390,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2008\/05\/21\/macs-brewjolais-2008\/","url_meta":{"origin":17077,"position":2},"title":"Mac’s ‘Brewjolais’ 2008","author":"Phil","date":"May 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Mac's new(ish) 'Brewjolais', their stab at a pale ale. And it's a delightful little success, you'd have to say. A tasty, zingy little aromatic number that I've definitely taken a shine to. Afterthoughts, October 2010: Not just a 'pale ale', historical-me; a wet-hopped pale ale. Which is a great\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Mac's 'Brewjolais' 2008","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Macs-Brewjolais-2008-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18514,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/09\/21\/subcultural-cringe\/","url_meta":{"origin":17077,"position":3},"title":"Subcultural cringe","author":"Phil","date":"September 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So, that was me. I'm the wag,\u00a0in the old-timey parlance of the newspaper.\u00a0There's little point pretending otherwise, since the\u00a0sign was twenty steps from the front door of the pub where I work \u2014 and a large part of my m.o.\u00a0here involves uploading literally hundreds of handwriting samples you could compare\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mediawatch"","block_context":{"text":"Mediawatch","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/interesting-finds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wellington City Council 'Declare Your Love' ad (19 September 2016)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/WCC-Cringe-factor-wide.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/WCC-Cringe-factor-wide.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/WCC-Cringe-factor-wide.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/WCC-Cringe-factor-wide.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5651,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2013\/06\/08\/beer-diary-podcast-s03e02-baylands-brewery\/","url_meta":{"origin":17077,"position":4},"title":"Beer Diary Podcast s03e02: Baylands Brewery","author":"Phil","date":"June 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Not too long ago, George and I headed out to Newlands (which wasn't as far away or as, you know, rural as my City-boy brain had somehow assumed) to sit down for chat with Aidan and Nikki of the new Baylands Brewery \u2014 a fully-fledged commercial brewery built on tiny-tiny\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcast episodes"","block_context":{"text":"Podcast episodes","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/podcast-episodes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Baylands Brewery, almost in its entirety","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Baylands-Brewery.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Baylands-Brewery.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Baylands-Brewery.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Baylands-Brewery.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":289,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2007\/10\/27\/atlas-three-sisters\/","url_meta":{"origin":17077,"position":5},"title":"Atlas ‘Three Sisters’","author":"Phil","date":"October 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Three Sisters Scottish Ale. 500ml, $7ish, 4.2%, 27\/10\/07. 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Afterthoughts, October 2010: The \"mad Christian thing\" was the big (and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Atlas 'Three Sisters'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Diary-1039-Three-Sisters-Scottish-Ale-300x180.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17077"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17126,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17077\/revisions\/17126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}