Every couple has a special restaurant. Their old familiar, their venue of romance - first date, first kiss, or not even necessarily a debut, more just some place they picked up along the way and kept returning to, over and over, affirming their love for each other as soon as they step in through the door for dinner. Only adulterers have a special lunchtime restaurant.
The rest of us are out in the open, wholesome couples with normal appetites. “Our second home,” she texted when I sent her a photo on Monday night. I was in Wellington to report on the Scott Watson appeal .
Our restaurant was The Jasmin. Every couple wants to go downtown. “When you’re alone and life is making you lonely/ You can always go downtown,” sang Petula Clark, but she’s not seeing the full picture: downtown is just as exciting, just as glamorous, just as full of possibilities for couples as it is for singles wanting to be couples.
The Jasmin is on Lambton Quay. It’s the best downtown street in all of New Zealand - Queen St in Auckland is a violent nightmare, George St in Dunedin has mental health issues, Victoria St in Hamilton is okay for a couple of blocks but fizzles out into feral territory, and does Christchurch have anything left you can really describe as a downtown street? I walked along Lambton Quay’s sensual curves each night after the appeal towards The Jasmin, in the falling rain, among thousands of people in winter coats, and I fancied that their faces were not at all tired b.