Shed 5, Wellington, New Zealand

We ate at only one restaurant the whole trip to an island country that was truly "on the dock" and this is the one--it may have a working class location, but it is definitely a linen and crystal atmosphere--but with big windows looking out on the foot traffic, and other dockside sheds that were still in use for their original purposes. This is the most old school of the places that we ate--and it showed, we were at or below the mean age of the diners at the midday meal. There were a number of working folks having lunch, but they were at or above our age for the most part. What I mean is that while we had some innovative dishes here, there was the most "standard seafood fare" on the menu of any place that we ate, and we were aiming for restaurants where we could have food from the ocean.

One example is this seafood chowder--it was spectacular and every single table got at least one bowl of it. It had green lipped mussels (a New Zealand product that is shipped around the world), heavy on the cream base, but served at a perfect temperature, a hearty serving, and chock full of losts of seafood. A guilty pleasure but I would order again. We had some trouble translating the description in the menu to what we were served--we ended up with fried squid when that is definitely not what we wanted (but probably should have thought to ask, after seeing the rest of the menu), and it was good, just not what we wanted exactly. We were told that on the South Island we would get blck cod and on the North Island red snapper, and so it was. Our first taste of the North Isalnd fish is picture here, all fancied up with great sides. We did not have a bad meal in New Zealand, but this one came in in the bottom half.