Sweet Mother's Kitchen - finally!

Sweet Mother's Kitchen seems to be a bit of an institution, and I have been wanting to go there forever - but somehow up until now it never quite worked out. However, on Saturday afternoon a friend came to visit, and being ravenous + it being nearly dinner time we thought it would be just the thing.

It's pretty eclectic - a cool yet extremely random mixture of stuff crams every available piece of wall, which means there's always something to look at. It feels relaxed and I can see why it's so popular with the nighttime crowds on Courtenay Place.

There's a dazzling array of sauce - mostly variations on the chilli theme - on the table. Funnily enough we didn't touch any of these.

Despite our nagging stomachs none of us were really feeling like a full on meal - so we got three 'share' dishes between us. The curly fries were fabulous - even Mr Cake, who would not normally endorse fries, raved of their crunchy perfection, and I could not get enough. Plus, they're curly! Like springs of potato! And they came with delicious mayo, too - even better.

We also chose to indulge in the black bean quesadilla, which you could get as a single or a double - we chose the single, happy to rip it to shreds for sharing if necessary - but as it turned out that was three pieces so it was perfect. This was pretty good - hot and filled with soft, flavoursome beans. Not overly spicy but we could have fixed that with our choice of chilli sauce so really it was spot on - and it came with some fresh, zingy salsa and smooth, delicious guacamole.

The third item in our trio was a serving of the buffalo wings - spicy and drippy and very, very messy but utterly delicious. We ate every last bite!

The service was friendly and efficient, and the food was all hot and super good - the only slightly negative factor was that despite the waiter checking we were sharing our three plates of food and getting us extra cutlery we didn't actually have plates (since the wings and fries were in baskets) - but we could have asked if we had really wanted them.

It was a perfect warming, belly-filling, craving-satisfying lazy Saturday meal. I will be back (Mr Cake, erring on the healthy side of the fence more often than I do, is probably quite disappointed I've discovered a purveyor of quality fried foods so close to home. He'll just have to deal with that!)

The bill came on a gorgeous little plate topped with a plastic whale. Randomly awesome! Also, their 'tip jar' was definitely the most innovative I've seen:

Unicorn indeed! Aren't we all pinching our pennies for one of those?




Sweet Mother's Kitchen is located at 5 Courtenay Place, Wellington, ph 04 385 4444, www.sweetmotherskitchen.co.nz