Wellington (Asian) Restaurants

Living in the capital city has many benefits, and one of them is a varied and wonderful selection of restaurants. We have just barely scratched the surface of the culinary delights here, and will have to live here for a very long time to adequately sample everything. But we have been enjoying what we have tried, so I thought I'd share a bit.

I originally named this post "Wellington Restaurants," but then as I uploaded my pictures, I realized that actually, the few places where I've remembered to take pictures have all been Asian places, so I had to update the title. I am a little obsessed with Asian restaurants, and while J is less monomaniacal about it, he enjoys them as well, so that's often where we go.

I discovered my passion for sushi while we were in New Plymouth, and then was overjoyed to discover that there are sushi places on approximately every corner of downtown Wellington. Yay! Unfortunately, many of these places only serve sushi in disposable plastic containers, which seriously dampens my enthusiasm. They are made of PET, which is pretty good on the recycling scale, but still, I don't like it. So I have found various ways to get around this issue at different restaurants.

This is at the sushi place in our tiny little local mall in Karori. I confuse the lovely owner every time I go in by asking to have my sushi there, on an actual plate. I am not convinced that he fully understands the environmental reasoning behind my request, but he's nice about it.

(Also, J always steals at least one of my takuyaki (octopus balls) and couldn't even wait for me to take the picture!)

This is a sushi place downtown, where you sit at this long bar, and the food goes by on a conveyor belt, and you just lift off whatever you'd like. How fun! Also, everything is on real, reusable plates, and the covers are reused as well, so that's a plus.

There are St Pierre Sushi places like this one absolutely everywhere in Wellington, and their sushi is delicious, but everything is already packaged in single-use plastic, so I don't go to them. (Well, I do, sometimes, but I only buy moshi, which are sweet little rice cakes with sweet bean paste filling that J and I quite adore, so we get them as a treat every now and then.)

My favourite sushi place in Wellington is Midland Sushi, which is down a little pedestrian road near the library (as all good things should be). You pick your sushi yourself, and the expectation is that you put it into single use plastic, but...

... I have my totally wonderful YumBox, which I bring with me to fill up instead. I used my YumBox in New Plymouth for packing all kinds of lunches and snacks, and only discovered when we moved here that it is perfect for filling up with sushi! The people at Midland Sushi looked at me oddly the first few times, but have now grown accustomed to my brilliance, and one lady who works there actually seems quite pleased each time she puts the little packet of soy sauce into the perfectly-sized little round container in the middle. Delicious sushi without environmental guilt - it's fabulous!

Wow, I'm thinking now that I actually should name this post "Wellington Sushi Restaurants," but I do have other things as well.

J and I went to Hede Cafe and Bar the other night, which is a Japanese restaurant. They were running a deal on GrabOne (which I've mentioned before - it's a discount website with some very amazing deals on activities and food), and we got appetizers and mains for very impressively low prices.

I got dumplings for my appetizer, and they were seriously amazing. I think I could eat Japanese dumplings for ever and ever. J got edamame, which was also very good, but didn't get a picture, as all edamame looks the same.

This was my main - teriyaki chicken, which has been a favourite of mine for a long time, and miso soup, which is always delightful.

J got the seafood tempura, which he reported was quite beautifully cooked. Please take a moment to appreciate that he actually let me take a picture before starting to eat this time! Well done, J!

Just this week, my friend Christophe and I were wandering around, and he showed me this delightful international food court, which I must have walked by 100 times and never noticed! The picture doesn't give a good sense of the diversity of this place - there had to be at least 30 little stalls with food from all over the world. I'd say that the majority were Asian, but there were also plenty that weren't. Christophe and I both enjoyed our meals, and I'll be excited to go back and try out some of the others. (This is another place to be careful of disposables, but I think that they can be avoided with some intentional choosing on my part.) Next time, I have to find a place that serves Pad Thai, because I haven't had any since Canada (where it was abundant and fantastic) and I miss it.

Next time I do a food-related post, I will endeavour to have a wider variety of cuisines represented, but no promises. I actually like food from pretty much every culture (that I've tried), but I just keep coming back to Asian cuisine, and I'm very lucky that it is so popular and easy to find here. So I take advantage!