Louis Sergeant's tasting plates

Louis Sergeant has a new home at the top of Lambton Quay. The decor has been refreshed and now boasts a street-facing store front to entice hungry customers in for afternoon tea. There are fewer tables and no kitchen on site so the selection now focuses on a more refined and predominantly sweet menu. The high tea menu has also been refreshed. There are now nine sweet items (no savoury) available Wednesday to Sunday.

Even with a refined menu, you're really spoiled for choice. Everything looks so perfectly appealing. If you can't decide, I'd recommend a tasting plate of three petits fours and coffee or hot chocolate for $14. The selection changes frequently and features miniature versions of the full sized patisserie items. My platter gave me explosions of flavour featuring chocolate, hazelnut, choux pastry, lemon, vanilla and pistachio ... and an appetite to return and try three more treats another day.

Tasting plate

Mad Hatter's Tea Party with a twist

High tea two weekends in a row? It must be Wellington on a Plate. The Mad Hatter's Tea Party with a twist was held at the festival hub behind Prefab Cafe.

This dapper couple were suitably dressed for the occasion.

Thomas the Tank Engine meets the Mad Hatter

We entered through the magical festival hub, where candy floss clouds were there for the taking.

Candy floss clouds

Walk past the popcorn wall and entice your palette. Which will you choose: sweet, sour, bitter salty or umami?

A wall of popcorn

Alice invites you ...

Welcome!

  ... to follow her down down the rabbit hole ...

Don't get lost!

... and take your seat.

Table setting

The flowers look so pretty ...

Pretty flower bowl

... but they're actually a resting place for this little blue penguin!

A penguin ice sculpture

Ooh, a game of chess! Who is brave enough to play?

Giant chess board

Time for tea. Teapot cocktails were served. There were no non-alcoholic or coffee substitutions included (apart from some available for purchase) so we stuck with water.

Tea is served

While waiting for our food to arrive, we visited the vending machine in the Visa Festival Hub and munched on another pottle of popcorn along the way.

Treat yourself for just $1!

Here's how the menu transformed:

Mad Hatter's high tea

Where to start? At the bottom, of course! Rabbit pies, chicken liver and plum jelly brioche doughnuts, and cucumber, cream cheese and cricket (yes, cricket) sandwiches. The brioche and bread were amazing. The fillings ... well, I need a bit more getting used to chicken liver and crickets. Surprisingly, the chili and black ant candy floss was actually quite delicious.

Savoury style

These champagne jelly tarts were set on shortbread and dusted with freeze dried raspberries.

Champagne jellies

And no Mad Hatter's tea party would be complete without jam tarts. We finished off high tea with a mini chocolate (mousse) garden.

The Queen of Heart's tarts

This Mad Hatter's tea party was a magical way to wile away an hour on a Saturday afternoon.

Afternoon tea at Louis Sergeant

Yesterday, I treated a foodie colleague to afternoon tea at Louis Sergeant in Featherston Street. From the moment you pull open the wide, heavy door you get the feeling of entering a French salon - not that I've ever experienced this for myself but this is how I imagine they would be. Tables were buzzing with conversation over delightful treats. What's not to love?

My phone was out of my bag as quickly as my eyes popped out of my head and I instantly became one of 'those' foodies who feel compelled to photograph everything I'd eaten, as well as things I hadn't. Feast your eyes on this beautiful display counter full of immaculately constructed treats.

Feast your eyes

More to drool over

It was incredibly hard to choose. I settled on a hot chocolate with Religieuse Belle Hélène, choux pastry filled with a 70% dark chocolate mousse and a light pear puree. The pear puree balanced the richness of the dark chocolate beautifully and the smooth mousse inside the choux pastry melted in my mouth.

Religieuse Belle Hélène

Afternoon tea at Louis Sergeant was just what we needed for a mid-week treat and to break our 3.30-itis. We can't wait to come back for high tea!

Classic soda and siphon workshop

And now for something a little bit different. Last night's Wellington on a Plate event was a hands-on classic soda and siphon workshop at Six Barrel Soda Co. We pulled up seats at the soda fountain and had some fun making yummy drinks.

We started by getting up close and personal with a soda siphon. This involved shaking (and shaking and shaking) this contraption to carbonate the water.

Soda siphon

We then used it to make our own soda floats, a smoother version of the old ice cream spiders we grew up with. Fill the glass to 3/4 with ice, then 3/4 with carbonated water. Pour 35 ml of soda syrup over the top and let it settle into the glass. (That's the correct way to make a soda. If you use alcohol, pour it into the bottom of the glass to mix it.) Add a scoop of ice cream or gelato and then more carbonated water on top. This gives the ice cream a frothy look and means that you can drink it, rather than eat it as a sundae. This is my classic cherry pomegranate soda float.

Cherry pomegranate soda float

We then experimented with a range of flavoured syrups and garnishes to create our own uniquely flavoured sodas. The syrups are all made onsite and distributed around the world from this little upstairs soda bar. I tried out the raspberry lemon syrup, added a few drops of orange bitters and delicately garnished it with orange and lime wedges. Very refreshing!

Raspberry lemon and bitters soda

It was time to step things up a notch. I added a dash of ginger syrup, then some freshly picked mint, a cucumber slice, some more bitters ... you get the picture. It was so much fun adding splashes of syrup and other ingredients to create new flavours. The results are only limited by your imagination!

Sweet Couture - Pâtissier Louis Sergeant

For just a few nights during Wellington on a Plate this year, pâtissier Louis Sergeant has opened up his kitchen to teach a small handful of guests how to create an exquisite French pastry dessert. Louis assures us we can whip up a chocolate and hazelnut sphere at home. After watching him in action on Tuesday night, I'm not so sure!

Sweet Couture on Featherston Street has been on my list of places to visit ever since it opened earlier this year. I walk past it most days and promise myself that I will come back with some girl friends so we can have a ladies' afternoon tea. Just look at these tempting pastries!

Pastry counter

The session was complemented by wine pairing with Nicola Belsham on behalf of Feast & Vine. We began with a small glass of late harvest Martinborough sauvignon blanc. We were told all about the science of wine and food matching and how you should choose a wine that is sweeter than the food being served. (That explains stickies!)

We moved behind the scenes into the kitchen, where Louis demonstrated how to effortlessly create a masterpiece for dessert. He developed this recipe for chocolate hazelnut spheres especially for Wellington on a Plate and urged us to try it at home. It is created in three stages, beginning with making a hazelnut paste, which needs to set in the fridge, then mixing an almond meringue sponge base.

Louis pipes almond meringue into baking rings

While the sponge is cooking, the chocolate hemispheres are created. Louis showed us a simple way to temper the chocolate before brushing it into silicon moulds. Once set, one hemisphere is placed on a cooled meringue sponge piece, then filled with hazelnut creme. The edges of the second piece are gently melted and then carefully placed on top to create a beautiful masterpiece. Louis makes it all look so effortless; I imagine it's going to take plenty of practice to create anything that even remotely looks like a sphere at home.

Louis assembles the chocolate sphere

We moved back into the cafe to enjoy our treats, which were matched with a fortified red dessert wine.

Chocolate hazelnut sphere

This was a really enjoyable evening. Louis Sergeant is delightful and talks with real passion about the pastries he creates. The wine matching part of the evening didn't do much for me; I don't think it necessarily added anything to the event. However, I can't wait to return with friends for afternoon tea. I want to try one of absolutely everything in the counter and see if they taste as delicious as they look. (I'm sure they will!)

Happy Tea - High Tea

Friday was a foodie's delight for me, with two Wellington on a Plate events in one day. After learning the secrets of Dom's Cheese Scones before work, I celebrated the end of a very busy week with a special Happy Tea - High Tea at Martha's Pantry. We were assured that our grandmothers would have enjoyed a tipple at high tea, so some special tea-based cocktails were created to accompany this event. Look at the beautifully set table.

A beautiful table setting

The high tea menu was similar to the one I enjoyed at Let Them Eat Cake last weekend. This time, we were provided with a booklet featuring some of the recipes from high tea. I quickly looked for the lemon curd that I loved ... and discovered it's actually made in the microwave!

I'm not a tea drinker - not even remotely - but luckily had brought a tea drinker with me. We cautiously approached the tea cocktail menu, looking for something that I might enjoy and found it in the hot masala chai cocktail, which was essentially mulled wine. Two pots later ... yes, I can assure you it was very nice mulled wine! I wasn't impressed with the iced coconut rough cocktail, though. It was far too sweet for me to take more than a couple of sips, a situation that my friend took advantage of by polishing off most of the 1 litre pitcher.

And then we got to the food. Three tiers of exquisitely prepared sandwiches, savouries and sweets. We discovered that mulled wine didn't go too well with the cool cucumber sandwiches with minted cream cheese, so fixed that by topping up our tea cups, cleansing our palettes with long sips of mulled wine and moving onto the next tier. It was lovely to finish off with some soft opera gateau, along with tiny raspberry macarons and a creme patisserie sweet pastry tart. I'll definitely be emailing Martha's Pantry to ask for those recipes.

Happy tea high tea

As we polished off the final tier, we were astounded to look across at the next table and see four ladies sitting around a half-full high tea serving set, having methodically each eaten the same food item together at the same time, then taking a break before moving onto the next. We don't understand this kind of restraint but redeemed ourselves slightly by discovering that we didn't win the medal for first finished in the room; another pair had beaten us - just.

Pravda cheese scones

What day is it? Cheese Scone Friday! :-D

By now, everyone who knows me (and plenty who don't) know that Cheese Scone Friday is one of my favourite things. The fact it happens on most people's favourite working day is an added bonus. However, for those of us who are scone challenged and not confident enough to make our own cheese scones, it pays to know where to find the best ones in town. There was a scone hunt in the Wellington CBD earlier this year that sought to uncover the secret. How I would have loved to been the food detective on this project! But, for me, nothing beats Dom's world famous cheese scones.

On Friday mornings, I get off the bus and head straight to Pravda to nab a takeaway cheese scone before they run out. Demand is red hot and I've been caught out before by thinking there would be some left by coffee time. Now, I don't take the risk. I had a close call this morning when my bus was late and the cheese scone cabinet was empty. The lovely lady at the counter must have noted my panic-stricken face and said the magic words: "We have some more cheese scones, if that's what you're after." Whew!

I was gutted to miss out on Dom's Cheese Scone classes during Wellington on a Plate and hope (with fingers and toes crossed) that he will agree to hold some more breakfast sessions for us cheese scone aficionados.

Cheese Scone Friday

A good backup for Cheese Scone Friday is Legato Cafe, with their light and fluffy cheese puffs, or Pandoro Panetteria, which has just opened up another cafe nearby. What better way to make Fridays even more enjoyable?

Coffee for a good cause

A short while ago, @LocalsTrade started following me on Twitter. A few clicks later and I had learned about a great project that had me intrigued.

Basically, Locals involves donating a can of food (or several) in exchange for coffee, with the proceeds going to charity. I thought/tweeted about how good it would be if Locals set up in Wellington. It seems like @lafarre read my mind, or at least my tweet, and now Wellington Locals is ready to kick off with Wellington City Mission benefitting from the canned food donations.

I've been really impressed with Caffe L'Affare's anti-surcharge on public holidays this year, where patrons are not charged a surcharge and instead the cafe donates 15% of the day's proceeds go to a local charity. They seem like a natural partner for the Locals project and I'm really glad to see them supporting the local community in such a practical way.

Wellington Locals launches at Caffe L’affare, 27 College Street, Wellington, this morning from 9-11 am, then every Monday and Tuesday 9-11 am until 22 October. I'm hoping to make it up to that part of town with a can or two to support this worthy project and encourage other coffee lovers to do the same. Spread the word!

WOAP lunch: Astoria

Wellington on a Plate continues this week. Today's lunch was at Astoria, a bustling café in Midland Park on Lambton Quay. The $15 lunch menu has two courses. There is also a burger option available.

Astoria is usually very full and I was wary about getting a table for six during a busy lunch hour, but was assured that we wouldn't need to book as their staff keep tables moving efficiently. I got there a few minutes earlier anyway and was really impressed with the service. Although the café wasn't so full today, staff quickly pushed two tables together and reserved them for our group while I waited for everybody outside. Fantastic!

The two courses are served together on a large plate, with a mug of roasted pumpkin soup with Lot Eight olive oil and herb and parmesan croutons to begin with. As a huge pumpkin soup fan, I was keen to try this. The soup was steaming hot and I needed to let it cool awhile before eating it so I began with the burger instead and came back to the soup later. The croutons soaked into the soup, making it thicker and leaving a very sweet flavour. Lovely!

The main course is Island Bay Butchery sloppy joes on a soft Astoria bap with housemade coleslaw and pickles. This was my first experience with sloppy joes and, given that I'm not the most coordinated burger eater in the best of times, I wasn't sure where to begin so did my usual hack job of deconstructing the burger and eating it bit by bit. This meant that I got to appreciate each of the individual ingredients. The housemade toasted bap was very good.

Pumpkin soup and sloppy joes

A great tasting lunch that's good value for money.

WOAP lunch: Thunderbird Cafe

We had a yummy Wellington on a Plate lunch at Thunderbird Cafe today. Thunderbird is a quirky café in Featherston Street that is known for great coffee, cheese scones and its funky decor. Their WOAP set menu is good value at $25 and includes two courses and a beverage.

I'm glad I had booked a table earlier in the day as the café was full to bursting when we arrived, which is always a good sign. I chose an entree and main combination along with a nicely chilled glass of Cottier sauvignon blanc 2011. I felt very grown up drinking wine at lunchtime!

My first course was Tuatara beer-battered squid with lemon and housemade remoulade. I'm not sure which type of beer went into the mountain of batter but I was able to rescue some slices of squid from the outer layer and dip it in the homemade remoulade. Very nice.

Beer battered squid and a glass of sav

I chose the free range Wairarapa pulled-pork sandwich with shredded cabbage, potato salad and housemade citrus herb BBQ sauce for my main course. The pork was really good and the sandwich was filling. I've come to really like Maori purple potatoes (taewa) on the few occasions I've tried them and they were great in the potato salad.

Pulled pork sandwich with shredded cabbage and purple potato salad

I rolled back to the office after lunch feeling contented and very full. It's a shame siestas are not commonplace in New Zealand as this afternoon would have been the perfect occasion for one.

Suspended coffee

We've all read the Facebook post about buying a suspended coffee for a person in need. Whether or not it is legitimate is not the point; the do-good intentions of the act make us feel all warm and fuzzy as we imagine a 'free' coffee making someone's day. As a coffee lover, I know that a bad day can turn into a good one (or at least a tolerable one) with the help of a single good cup of coffee to savour and enjoy. Who wouldn't want to spread those joy germs around?

Apparently caffè sospeso originated in Naples, where you are guaranteed to find a plethora of characters begging on the streets in the cafe and restaurant quarters. One night in Napoli, I watched a man work his craft. His handmade sign said "Ho fame" ("I'm hungry") and he was kneeling on a strip of cardboard. During the course of my meal, people continually stopped to give him money - so much so that he was quickly sorting coins into different pockets as soon as the donor had walked away; euros on one side, cents on the other. People also gave him food: burgers and panini ... even restaurateurs came out from several different places with bags of leftovers. These were quickly hidden out of sight behind him and the kneeling resumed. Now, I had/have absolutely no idea of his circumstances, and he was in no way the only one out on the street that night, but I certainly noted the generosity of the Napolitani people during one short hour.

I read this morning that Wellington, the coffee capital, is now warming to suspended coffee. I'm not surprised to see that People's Coffee in Newtown has got the ball rolling and that Flight Coffee are also interested. I expect Caffe L'Affare won't be too far behind, either. Their anti-surcharge on public holidays is a great show of charity support.

Would you buy a suspended coffee for someone? I've done it a couple of times for Random Acts of Kindness Day on 1 September. I have no idea who the recipients were (and sincerely hope that it made someone's day) but, admittedly, this is just once a year. If suspended coffees do become part of our coffee culture, I hope there will still be momentum for it in a few months' time after the initial novelty has worn off.

Online restaurant reviews

I read a post recently on Mashable about the habits of restaurant goers. The headline says Most restaurant-goers rely on online reviews. Now, most would be hard to qualify and the stats referred to are American, but I was intrigued with this quote: "Before setting foot outside, about 45% of consumers have already chosen where to eat with the help of an online dining guide."

Is this true in New Zealand? Could it ever be? I frequently review cafés and restaurants for DineOut, an online review community that accepts reviews from the New Zealand dining public. Menumania is another one. Both sites are places I turn to when contemplating a new dining experience or looking for something different (if I have enough warning), but I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying I rely on them. Then there's that whole thing about the advice of strangers ... Twitter is great for that.

I try to reserve my judgement until I've tried a restaurant myself and will then review my dining experience honestly, be it positive or negative. I believe that praise should be given where praise is true; the same is true with criticism - albeit fairly. I gloss over reviews that gush 10/10 about everything or are extremely negative, but usually find that the collective rating of an establishment over time can be quite accurate. Mostly.

Do you use/post online reviews for restaurants? What convinces you to try (or avoid) a new restaurant?

Coffee cup challenge

Surfing the net and drinking coffee at home on a rainy summer's day, I came across The great coffee cup recycling challenge. Now, I'm not usually someone who jumps on their environmental high horse, but this really got me thinking. Using reusable takeaway coffee cups is not rocket science; it's just plain common sense. So why don't more people do it?

As a coffee lover, I'm one of those five-coffee-a-week habiters mentioned in the article. Last year, I bought a reusable coffee cup from Coffee Creation and use it daily at work. To me, it made good economic as well as environmental sense as I am charged 50c less for coffee when I use my own cup, which meant it paid for itself in no time at all. It's not big bucks but it all adds up. As colleagues' disposable cups pile up in bins several times a day, a quick rinse of my cup leaves it ready to go for next time and I just throw it into the dishwasher at home in weekends. Easy!

I chose this style over the increasingly popular Keep Cup as I prefer to drink from ceramic rather than plastic, but the concept is the same. Much like using reusable supermarket bags, it is an easy habit to adopt and makes more sense than consuming endless packaging destined for landfills. Actual recycling of these disposable products rarely occurs and is both a difficult and costly process.

At weekends, I will either make a stovetop espresso at home or drink coffee at a local café. Occasionally I'll buy coffee to take away if I'm on the move but this doesn't happen very often. I've got to say that in all my frequenting of cafés, I don't recall any that advertise different prices for takeaway coffee served in your own cup. The wonderful Celcius Café in Petone uses biodegradable takeaway cups and the rest of their coffee production is totally sustainable, too. There may be others, but none instantly come to mind. Perhaps if the financial incentives were spelt out in black and white with two prices side by side then bringing your own takeaway cup would become a more attractive option, benefitting the environment at the same time?

How about you? Do you use reusable takeaway coffee cups? What do you think is the best way to encourage coffee drinkers to adopt reusable cups?

Scrumptious treats at Bordeaux Bakery

Last night, my baking buddy and I attended our first Wellington on a Plate festival event for this year. We met a year ago at the Welly on a Plate patisserie class at WelTec and have met up since then for regular coffee sessions to talk about baking. (It helps that we also work at the same place, something we discovered at the patisserie course!) We drooled over this year's programme and signed up as quickly as we could for some events, but despite being promised pride of place at the top of one event's waiting list, only managed to get into one together. Luckily, it was a goodie!

Hosted by Feast and Vine, Bordeaux Bakery was the setting for an event called Scrumptious Treats. As a café, Bordeaux has seen better times. However, there is no denying what they are best at: baking (and, in particular, pastry).

This is the first time the kitchen at Bordeaux has been open to the public and owner/pâtissier Jean Louis gave us a tour looking at the amazing kitchen equipment imported from France. Everything starts cranking up from 1 am each day and most of the baking is finished by 2-3 am (or 5 am at the latest), leaving the bread enough time to cool so it isn't too hot when it is picked up by the other Bordeaux bakeries at 5.30 am. We felt like miniature cartoon characters wandering among the huge ovens, fridges and mixers that would put my little Kenwood cake mixer to shame.

Now THAT'S a mixer!

Jean Louis showing us one of the fridges

We headed back into the café for a demonstration on making Bordeaux's most popular dessert, duchess cake. It looked so simple when Jean Louis whipped up some chocolate mousse then piped it onto a frozen merinque before coating it in more chocolate mousse and dipped it into grated chocolate. Mind you, he certainly had all the right tools and the best ingredients imported from France. Check out this chocolate grater!

Chocolate grater

Sauterne and a blueberry tart -
the perfect wine and food match

We then had a lesson on wine and food matching; it's quite a science. Basically, acidity is king and it's all about balancing acidity and the flavours in the wine with whatever you are eating. A common myth is that you should drink similar flavours to what you are eating; this will cancel out the taste and you'll just be left with acidity. To cut a long story short, we were told that this 2007 sauterne (dessert wine) was the perfect match for the acidity of blueberries in this tart, and I'd have to agree. The sauterne was very pleasant on the palette, infused with apricot, cinnamon and cloves and is quite honestly the first dessert wine I have actually enjoyed drinking.

Advertised as a two-hour event, we were finished after 1 hour and 10 minutes, which is a bit cheeky but we got to take home a duchess cake each, so that (kind of) makes up for it.