Burger Wellington has been running every year in the capital since 2009.
It’s one of the most popular features of Wellington On A Plate, an annual food festival designed to boost the hospitality industry during the quieter winter months.
This year’s competition boasts 209 unique burger entries.
Wellington On a Plate has been described as one of the largest food festivals in the southern hemisphere.
Founded in 2009 after the global financial crisis with a goal to support Wellington’s hospitality industry during the typically quiet month of August, the promotion has grown to boast hundredsof burgers and events each year.
It’s become tradition for many Wellingtonians to write long lists of creative burgers to try in their lunch breaks and after work, many designed to challenge the senses and play with flavours.
As someone who has never taken part in Burger Wellington, I had questions about how the well-known competition was faring.
Does it still carry the appeal to get people out of their kitchens and pumping money into the sector? Is it worth it for punters, and venues, to take part? And after so many years and thousands of unorthodox burgers, was there still an appetite for new and creative offerings?
Five Wellington restaurants invited the Herald to try their entries free of charge for an official review.
Flutter Chicken is a recent addition to Wellington’s culinary scene. A sister restaurant to Vaibhav Vishen’s Chaat St next door, this takeaway window serves creative Indian-style twists on takeaways like a rogan josh hotdog or curry leaf fried chicken.
Flutter’s burger was a korma-style braised brisket, Indian-style cabbage achar and smoked tempered yoghurt in a Shelly Bay sesame bun with a papadam whacked inside.
The burger itself was massive but thoroughly enjoyable. A generous bunch of coriander and mint inside was a welcome herbaceous touch and the papadam helped give texture to what otherwise risked becoming a rather soggy affair.
Vishen’s instruction to give the burger a whack with your fist to break the papadam added a fun interactive element.
Otto Champagneria
Yuba Duba, $24 - 7/10
Otto Champagneria's Yuba Duba burger.
A vegan burger made up of sticky chilli yuba (bean curd skin), crispy enoki mushroom crepe, Goi Ga red cabbage and peanut slaw, and chardonnay lemongrass mayo in a Cottage Lane brioche bun. This burger also came with battered daikon chips and spicy caramel ketchup on the side.
I’m not a vegan, so recognise I’m not the target audience, and with an aversion to mushrooms and peanuts I was initially fearful, but the Yuba Duba pleasantly surprised me.
It stood rather high on the plate making it a difficult eat, but the ingredients were creative, and the flavours were strong. The fried mushroom was incredibly crunchy and the slaw was uniquely flavourful. There was a lot going on in this burger.
I did not care for the daikon chips, which tasted more like detritus from the bottom of Otto’s deep fryer, but I left feeling satisfied and with a new-found appreciation for bean curd skin.
The Cuba St Tavern has big shoes to fill, replacing the institution that was Cuba Street’s Olive. The new venue has only been open a few months with a new modern pub style fit-out. I went with two colleagues to try The Chick Magnet burger: fried chicken patty, apple fennel and lavender slaw, a slice of cheddar, and “Alabama pink sauce” in a Poneke Bakery milk bun topped with chilli salt.
I would describe this burger as nice. It was tasty, a fairly bog-standard, pub-style fried chicken burger. The chicken was well seasoned and not dry, the sauce was zingy, the slaw was fresh.
My colleagues loved it, but I thought it was missing something. The lavender element was perhaps the only unique WOAP pizzazz in this burger, but that lavender flavour was lost upon consumption. I would order it again, but it probably belongs on their standard menu.
One80
Curry Rice Papad Project, $37 - 9/10
One80's Curry Rice Papad Project.
I can immediately see how chef Chetan Pangam has won Burger Wellington for the last two years in a row.
Two slider-type burgers, one beef Indian-style cheeseburger with a Goan cafreal curry sauce, the other a coconutty fish burger with micro coriander and topped with caviar.
These burgers were amazing. Plush rice-kanji buns, intense flavour, and insane attention to detail in every ingredient, you can tell Chetan has spent the past 12 months working on this year’s entry.
The fish was the stand-out of the two; delicate, flavourful, fresh. For a hotel restaurant (One80 is located in the Copthorne at Oriental Bay), this was a fine dining experience.
The Library
Velvet Kiss, $15 - 8.5/10
The Library's Velvet Kiss.
After a week of burgers I needed something different, so the Library’s dessert burger was a welcome change.
The Velvet Kiss consists of a vegan cream cheese ice cream patty, dairy-free chocolate cheese and Biscoff sauce in a Dough Bakery vegan red velvet brioche bun.
This decadent treat was thoroughly enjoyed. The cold, soft ice cream patty was perfectly complemented by the sweet Biscoff sauce. The chocolate cheese with its rubbery texture had me confused in a good way.
I expected a cake bun so thought I would take issue with the breadiness of the brioche, but its buttery flavour worked well.
For only $15, there was a lot to love here.
Final thoughts
Noticing some of his restaurants don’t take part in Burger Wellington, I wanted to hear Restaurant Association national president Mike Egan’s take on the festival.
With 39 years in Wellington’s hospitality scene, Egan now co-owns Boulcott St Bistro, Monsoon Poon, and Burger Liquor, so was well placed to give a nuanced view of the pros and cons for restaurant owners.
“It’s been amazing”, Egan said.
Restaurant Association president Mike Egan. Photo / Mark Mitchell
“If it didn’t work, people wouldn’t sign up for it”, he said, and with a slight increase in the number of burgers on offer this year, Burger Wellington doesn’t show any sign of dying soon.
The Wellington Culinary Events Trust’s Penny de Borst claims that in previous years Wellington On a Plate has generated $9 million in economic benefit for Wellington.
After a year of restaurant and cafe closures in the capital, anything that gets people out supporting the hospitality industry has to be a good thing.
Burger Wellington runs until Sunday August 24.
Ethan Manera is a New Zealand Herald journalist based in Wellington. He joined NZME in 2023 as a broadcast journalist with Newstalk ZB and is interested in local issues, politics, and property in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz.
