Date with a plate

There are more than 80 festival events - including everything from cupcakes and cocktails, to wild foods and workshops.

Burger Wellington makes a welcome return; with dozens of restaurants and cafes creating their own spin on the classic, while more than 100 eateries of every culinary persuasion are offering lunch and dinner specials over the 17-day festival.

This year also sees the introduction of the Wellington Bake Club, the Fisher & Paykel masterclass and the inaugural New Zealand Chocolate Festival. Wellington in mid-winter? Here's a selection of what's in store.

Hot chocolate

Chocolate with fish, chocolate with pate, chocolate with chicken, chocolate with sea salt, chocolate with cake. It's fitting that we're being served this chocolate feast in a restaurant named Chameleon, as here you'll find chocolate in more guises than you could have imagined.

Chameleon, in Wellington's InterContinental Hotel, is home to the inaugural New Zealand Chocolate Festival, running during next month's Wellington on a Plate, and tonight we're the guinea pigs for the five-course degustation dinner they'll be serving from August 5 to 21 as part of the event.

For starters, there's the creamily savoury duck liver pate that's been spraypainted with a mist of Whittaker's 72% Ghana chocolate, followed by snapper in cacao butter with chocolate agrodolce.

Yes, we had to ask too; it's an Italian sweet-and-sour sauce. A luscious and silky sweet-and-sour sauce, which for me is the star of the show.

Before our mains appear, chefs Edmond Weicherding and Andreas Reinhardt materialise with a bowl of steaming liquid nitrogen to whip up a palate-cleansing sorbet of cacao and sea salt, before heading back to the kitchen to plate our mains of roast chicken breast - free range of course - on a cacao and mascarpone polenta.

It's a superb amalgam of two great comfort foods - roast chicken and chocolate. And pudding? The chocolate and orange symphony - mousse, cheesecake, parfait, creme brulee - and not a dud note among them. With my bed awaiting me eight floors up, sweet dreams are guaranteed.

Chameleon's five-course chocolate degustation dinner is $85 per person and is available during Wellington on a Plate. The InterContinental lobby will also feature ChocDine, a selection of chocolate treats from the lobby bar menu, and ChocBar - yes, chocolate cocktails.

Accommodation packages are available during August: A Chocolate Dream, available August 5 to 21, including one night's accommodation for two in a superior guest room, breakfast for two, and the five-course degustation dinner. From $325, including GST.

A Chocolate Festival Package is available on August 12 and 13 for $295. This includes one night's accommodation, two tickets to the chocolate festival, and a full buffet breakfast for two.

The Cuba revolution

There are nearly 13,000km separating Floridita's, the legendary cafe on Wellington's Cuba St, from Floridita's, the legendary cafe in Havana, Cuba.

This may well explain the focus of the Wellington cafe on local, not Latin. We're here for morning tea, which sees us tucking into impossibly perfect pastries and cakes: walnut tarts (walnuts from Ohau in Horowhenua); feijoa and almond tarts (feijoas from the garden of a B&B near Shannon); a sensational gingerbread with real (ie, no condensed milk involved) caramel sauce and, for a savoury edge, light and golden cheese- and-rocket scones.

Floridita's bakery, from where these goodies spring, is pretty local too - it's in a former potter's studio just around the corner off Swan Lane. Our morning tea is as good as it gets and it's impossible not to also admire the crockery on which it's served.

Explains Floridita's co- owner Julie Clark, a "network of grannies" regularly turn up at the cafe with boxes of fine china they've foraged from fairs, op- shops and family cupboards.

Floridita's Dine Wellington specials are: lunch, choose any two courses plus a glass of Wellington regional wine for $35; dinner, three courses plus two glasses of Wellington regional wine for $70. Burger Wellington entry: Burguesa de Floriditas.

Just a block further south along Cuba St is the seriously great Logan Brown. We take our seats near the centre of this beautifully restored former 1920s' bank and watch, over the course of our lunch, as a procession of diners troop in and out of the kitchen.

Turns out if you want a behind- the-scenes look at one of the country's top restaurants, all you need to do is ask. When it's our turn, the perpetually cheery co- owner, Steve Logan, leads us downstairs to one of the two kitchens, where we find Conrad Smith helping out with the evening's dessert prep. That's right, All Black Conrad Smith.

According to Logan, he's a keen foodie, so he's learning a few tricks at this temple of contemporary New Zealand cuisine.

Our lunch is a sneak peek of Logan Brown's Dine Wellington special: a choice of potato-and- sage gnocchi, or Martinborough sauvignon blanc vine-smoked salmon for starters, and Plimmerton tarakihi or merino lamb shoulder braised in the locally brewed Yeastie Boys porter for dinner.

Dessert is a zingily tart and sweet custard, made with limoncello made in Waikanae. For $45, you choose two courses and there's a glass of Wellington regional wine thrown in for good measure. If fine dining is usually beyond your budget, here's the perfect entree - just make sure you've put an extra bit aside to splash out on a side of Logan Brown's justifiably famous truffled shoestring fries.

Logan Brown's Dine Wellington specials: lunch, choose any two courses plus a glass of Wellington regional wine for $45; dinner, a complimentary glass of Palliser Estate Methode Traditionelle when any meal is ordered from the main menu (pre-theatre bistro diners not eligible).

Burger Wellington entry: Fawn and Fungi Burger.

A taste of Asia

First the good. The preview of The Modern Asian event organised by brother-and-sister team Derek and Teresa Yee, of Finc Dining Room on Wakefield St, was one of the most culinarily informative two hours of my life: exploring and explaining the often head- scratchingly diverse range of Asian food products now available in New Zealand.

For example: Instant Natural Jellyfish - eaten as a condiment with rice dishes or served with iceberg lettuce, squidgy in mouth-feel, not completely unpleasant but, to be honest, not something I'd rush back to.

Dried plums - eaten as a sweet in many Asian homes, they transport sticky pork ribs into a transcendent experience. Daikon radish: now widely available but far from a Kiwi kitchen staple - pickle it with thinly sliced carrot and cucumber in a brine of 50/50 sugar and white vinegar, zingy and refreshing.

The Yees, whose parents ran Chinese eateries in the capital for years, designed the class to explain not only the ingredients that form the basis of different Asian cuisines, but also to explain their place in tradition. Hence their catch-cry: "There's no confusion, this isn't fusion." "Fusion goes against our traditions and folklore," Teresa explains. "There are reasons why certain foods are eaten at certain times and how they're eaten."

And the bad? Derek and Teresa are currently deciding whether to arrange a third Modern Asian event after selling out the first two. Keep an eye on their website.

Finc Dining Room's Dine Wellington specials are: $35 lunch, choose any two courses plus a glass of Wellington regional wine; dinner, receive a complimentary glass of Wellington regional wine when any meal is ordered from the main menu.

Drive time

It may be only 10km from downtown Wellington, but Petone is still a bit of an unknown quantity for plenty of people, me included. We stop to fill water bottles at the natural spring on Buick St, then amble the main street, finding some great secondhand shops, cheese shop Cultured, specialist cookbook shop Bookfeast, lots of great coffee stops and Gusto Bistro, run by chef Duncan McKenna and partner Ruth Wilkinson.

In a beautifully restored art deco building, originally built for the local dentist, the pair have created a southern European inspired eatery, currently leaning in favour of Spanish-influenced tapas and small plates. There's a great selection of wine and beer - boutique, local and international. There's plenty to like: the wood- panelled dining room, the framed pictures by the couple's children on the walls, and treats like deep- fried ricotta balls.

Gusto Bistro's Dine Wellington specials: lunch, choose any two courses plus a glass of Wellington regional wine for $35; dinner, three courses for $55. Add three glasses of Wellington regional wine for $35. Burger Wellington entry: Lamb Baa-ger.

Antonio Cacace grew up in southern Italy, the son and grandson of Michelin chefs whose family hotel and restaurant La Primavera Italy, still runs today.

In the 90s he moved to Wellington and opened Bella Italia in Petone, with the aim of bringing to New Zealand the foods, flavours, passion and history of Italy.

We can also thank him for the fact that it's now possible to buy prosciutto di parma, buffalo mozzarella, aged parmigiano reggiano, and lots and lots of other Italian produce. Bella Italia combines a grocery outlet, selling a wide range of Italian cooking essentials, along with a nice selection of premium New Zealand products, a deli stocking superb olives, cheeses, meats, etc, and a bakery selling breads and Italian specialities such as canoles.

For ideas on how to use them, stop for lunch or dinner in the restaurant for a simply beautiful taste of Italy, washed down with a glass of Italian wine. Bella Italia also offers catering, cooking classes - for adults and children - and is involved in a wide range of community events, including the annual Italian Festival, which Cacace founded 16 years ago.

Bella Italia hosts Cibo-Arte (food and art on stage) during Wellington on a Plate. On August 17, opera singer Julia Booth will perform a special performance at the Little Theatre in Hutt City. After the performance, dinner, prepared by La Bella Italia's executive chef Gabriele Cagnetta, will be served on the stage.

Dine Wellington special: lunch and dinner, two courses plus a glass of Wellington regional wine, $35.