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Hillside Kitchen Cellar

4.5

Menu

Table booking

4.5

Menu

Table booking

City: Wellington, 241 Tinakori Rd, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand, 6011

"Hillside Kitchen is superb. Hillside is a vegetarian and vegan restaurant with a staff totally dedicated to providing awesome hospitality and creative deliciousness. The Head Chef (Max) has a solid foundation in traditional cooking and is also at the cutting edge of the culinary avant garde. He stays up to date on what the world's top chefs are inventing and inspired by these masters, comes up with his own unique dishes. Max gets many ingredients from foraging expeditions around Wellington and from Hillside's organic fruit and vegetable garden. And just about everything on the food menu and many of the non-alcoholic drinks are created in house. For example, there's a brilliant dipping sauce made from the fermented skins of chargrilled eggplants. Juniper soda, celery tonic, blackberry lemonade, kola soda and apple kombucha are some of Hillside's unique home-made drinks. The Hillside crew takes Eco-regeneration seriously and is always looking to improve their caring for the Environment. Food waste is kept to a minimum and recycling is a top priority. Breakfast and lunch are always available, but the main attractions are the 5 course and 7 course evening tasting experiences. Each dish on the tasting experience degustation menu is based on what's seasonably available and ingredients are locally sourced whenever possible. The menu changes daily so guests are in for a treat that always surprises. Every selection is crafted with meticulous attention to detail and literally each offering is a work of art worthy of a photograph. I had the 7 course Vegan Dinner and absolutely, this is something to be savoured slowly. Dinner takes about 3 to 4 hours and the restaurant has only 24 seats. Dinner begins at half past five. Both the 5 and 7 course experiences can be paired with wine or non-alcoholic matches. To start, there's a selection of 3 snacks followed by Hillside's home-made sourdough bread and one of New Zealand's highest quality premium olive oils for dipping. The bread is baked fresh and comes out of the oven just as dinner is starting and it is amazing a divine golden-brown crust surrounding a steaming hot downy pillow inside. Following bread, my 7 course experience kicked into mains mode with a broccoli and black garlic tartlet topped with wild yellow brassica flowers. Up next was a kaffir lime char-baked yams delight topped with a layering of yams thinly sliced and marinated. An arrangement of carrot and wild greens came next. And then the centre-piece of the experience was presented: a turine of celeriac with hazelnut cream, sprouted buckwheat and micro onion weed accompanied by a separate fresh kale, sauerkraut and magnolia flower salad along with a quinoa savoury bowl. Very nice. The transition to desserts was a sourdough crumpet topped with home-made strawberry jam and Hillside's smoked walnut cheese. The hot crumpet was a wonderful play of yang with the yin of the cold smoked cheese. A palate cleanser of tart apple kombucha sorbet sprinkled with tamarillo granita led perfectly into the dessert selection of which there were two: First an apple and parsnip pave topped with a hard candied fruit shell and a walnut accented spicy dukkah. And then a tamarilo compote with candied walnuts topped with a soft tamarillo fruit leather and a creamy almond and horopito sorbet. The experience finished with a selection of petit fours: a freshly baked hot rosemary peanut cookie; an ice cold dark chocolate banana-peanut truffle and a sugared apple jelly pectin candy. Chef Max is attentive to the rainbow of textures that makes a perfect dish and each of his presentations is an intuitive stroke of genius. The service at Hillside is super friendly and the 5 and 7 course degustation tasting menus are exceptionally good value. The waiters and waitresses are very knowledgeable and happy to answer questions and converse about all aspects of the restaurant. Hillside Kitchen is a cafe that makes one of the world's most liveable cities an even greater place."

#Western

Details

Western Kitchen Breakfast Wine Coffee