Scopa, Wellington and a prizewinner!

Last Thursday we had dinner with some friends who were up from Christchurch for the weekend.We spent quite a while trying to decide on a fitting spot for dinner, as between us we had a Coeliac, a vegetarian and someone with a pepper allergy. None of these things are exceptionally hard to work around on their own, but working them all in together plus getting somewhere handy to our place (as I was dashing there a bit late) and not too pricey for the studentfolk was a bit of a challenge. The real problem with eating out with food allergies is that it can be hard to know how a given restaurant handles them until you've tried it out - and if you have a bad allergy you don't really want to find out that way! Anyway, restaurants are definitely getting better at accommodating special requirements, and Scopa did a fine job.

Scopa is pretty renowned among Wellingtonians, I'm led to believe, and they tick the Italian pizza/pasta box. Somewhat amusingly (I've never done this before!) I managed to come away with photos of other people's food but not my own - oops! Anyway, we had some calamari fritte, which were the only appetiser for the table so the waitress asked about timing and we had everything arrive together - it's the little things that make the difference! The calamari were lovely, nicely peppered batter and juicy calamari inside - and yummy tartare sauce. My main was the intriguing sounding beef cheek ravioli, which was full-flavoured, though a little too rich for me - it would have been perfect as a starter or with something else, though. Mr Cake chose the Gamberetti pizza, which featured prawns under the mountain of rocket. He really loved this - the prawns were succulent and the rocket made it less like a plate full of bread and more like a balanced meal, maybe. ;-) Baby Sister Cake, who happened to be visiting us, had the Salsiccia, with Italian sausage, capsicum and red onion, and assured me it was very tasty - it certainly looked and smelled good.

Having caught a glimpse of the dessert menu it was a compulsory course. Mr Cake chose the tiramisu, which was lovely and creamy and not too strongly coffee flavoured. My pick was the almond olive oil cake, which I found pleasant but a little on the dry side. The poached grapes and marscapone were lovely accompaniments, but I wouldn't have this again. Baby Sister Cake chose the affogato, with hot chocolate instead of espresso, and I was a bit jealous I have to say - the chocolate was sooo thick. Yum!

Aside from having great service, and doing a great job of accommodating the dietary requirements of our group (the vegetarian commented it was difficult to choose, as there were quite a few options for him where there are often only one or two) Scopa has another great feature; you can watch the pizzas being made. The pizza prep area is basically in the middle of the restaurant, behind the counter, so you can watch the dough being spun and stretched and see them flinging ingredients on in a seemingly random fashion but turning out great-looking pizzas.

Anyway, I bet you're dying to know who won my chocolate competition! Firstly, thanks so much to everyone who did the survey - there were so many lovely comments and also some great ideas that I can hopefully build into upcoming posts. There were exactly 50 entrants, so I told random.org to give me a number between 1 and 50:

And then checked against the list of email addresses to see who was number 21:


To protect Debbie from you lot begging her for chocolate I've obscured the rest of her email address, but if your name is Debbie and you entered the competition I may be sending you a congratulatory email shortly. ;-) And thanks again to everyone for sharing your opinions!



Scopa is located on the corner of Cuba Street and Ghuznee Street, Wellington, ph 04 384 6020, www.scopa.co.nz