Wellington on a Plate Itinerary and Best Feeds

Wellington is a small but mighty food lover’s paradise. Each year, the city and the wider Wellington region come together to celebrate the very best of Wellington cuisine in Aotearoa’s largest food festival. The festival runs across the month of August, showcasing restaurants from the Great Wellington, including Kāpiti Coast, Porirua, Wairarapa, Hutt Valley, the Wellington suburbs, and the CBD.  

There are three ways restaurants can participate in Visa Wellington On a Plate 2026: 

• Ticketed Events 

• Non-Ticketed Events (AKA pop-ups or pay-on-consumption events) 

• Burger Wellington 

Ticketed Events

Ticketed events are designed to educate and challenge your senses, while offering plenty of yummy bites, such as:

The Gossip Club at The Library

The Gossip Club is a candlelit, phone-free evening where guests use sealed envelopes of Gossip, Rumour and Confession cards to spin, embellish and pass on stories, with a velvet-draped Confessional Chapel for secrets that never get revealed. Four themed cocktails and dessert canapés flow throughout the night, and with no photos or recordings allowed, everything that happens stays there.

George Motz: Burger Scholar

George Motz brings a masterclass Wellington on a Plate Itinerary, leading the audience through the story of the humble burger, tracing its roots from 13th-century Mongolia to modern American households. Motz will live-cook his version of the Oklahoma onion burger.

This is How We Eat

This event celebrates dishes that are shared around the family table. Sous Chefs of Chow will dive into an interactive presentation of their cooking, crafting their own family recipes passed down through generations. These dishes are remembered and passed down by word of mouth rather than in writing. Tickets include a shared dinner and matching cocktails.

French Cheese Escape

Cheese lovers - this is for you! Step into a little nook of France and indulge in an array of cheeses from different regions. You’ll receive a tasting passport and region guide, whisking you to the parts of France from which the cheeses in your tasting board come. Discover stories, traditions, and histories while indulging in cheeses, crackers, a baguette, and perfectly matched pastes.

Free Events

Free events are free to attend, and you just pay for whatever you eat and drink.

Capital of Kai

Capital of Kai tells the story of how Wellington became the paradise of cuisine. Take a journey through 100 years of food creatives, restaurant workers, and café culture. Enjoy bites from the 1930s British hotel dining (including roast mutton, boiled vegetables, milky tea). Dive into the evolution of the city’s diverse cuisine, knitted together by indigenous peoples, migrants and travellers such as Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Syrian, Greek, Māori.

Crying Tiger

Journey to the small northeast Thai village of Nong Khai, where families gather to share Tiger Steak. This free-to-enter event celebrates the aromatics and bold flavours of a beef steak marinated for 48 hours in coriander root, garlic, black pepper, oyster sauce, palm sugar, whiskey, and mandarin juice, char-grilled until the meat weeps with its own juices.

Enjoy a three-course set menu for $75, including granny smith apple salad. Enjoy charcoal smoke, sizzling meat, and unique bursts of flavour.

Next Gen Cook Off

Available Mondays in August, except for the 31st, this event showcases an up-and-coming chef crafting a three-course dinner built from rescued food, cooking it their way and style. The model is simple: good food, awesome company, and a room full of people making a difference one plate at a time. This event doesn’t require bookings. Enjoy a range of culinary tastes such as classics, contemporary, and bold barbeques.

Other Wellington Eats

If you’d like to further explore the culinary scenery in Wellington, we have three of the best feeds in the city, perfect for a night out with friends and whanau. There are also plenty of other food festivals in the city such as the Food Show.