New and approved is The Spinoff’s new series highlighting fresh hospo offerings. This week, Jean Teng recommends Glou Glou, the Wellington cafe that now transforms into a nighttime wine bar from Wednesday to Saturday.

What is it?

Glou Glou is mostly known as a daytime cafe – the type of aesthetic-forward bakery that displays its various enticing croissants, tarts and other beautifully browned pastries on the counter like artwork in a gallery. You look but you don’t touch, not yet, until it’s delivered to your table and the flakes of a delicious pain au chocolat shed all over your lap as you devour it faster than you mean to. 

But as of late March, you can drop in for a cosy nighttime visit too – from Wednesday to Saturday, Glou Glou transforms into a wine bar, open late.

Where is it?

In Pōneke, on Allen Street off Courtenay Place. I am new to Wellington but my flatmate, born and bred in this great capital city, texted me that the area had been “crying out for a good wine bar for a while now, and going to Rosella is like walking in on someone’s date night”. If you have any qualms about that statement, please direct your comments to “Alex”. Glou Glou is certainly a strong new contender for a pre-movie drink prior to a showing at Embassy Theatre (which The Spinoff recently crowned best Wellington cinema).

What’s new about it?

As mentioned earlier, although Glou Glou has been around as a cafe since 2024, it has for the last couple of months opened up as a wine bar on Wednesday to Saturday nights. The kitchen is currently headed by chef Laura Greenfield (previously seen at Field and Green, an eatery many of you will be familiar with that closed in late 2023). The snacks menu betrays many hints of her British background and perhaps flashes of the Field and Green we knew and loved: welsh rarebit, kedgeree croquettes, pork belly with quince paste.

The wine service is delivered with enthusiasm by a recently hired sommelier, Paul, who recommends wines with an aura of cultural authority, given his thick French accent (genuine, from what I can tell). According to this sweet Instagram video, Paul “cut his teeth interning at Christopher Coutanceau”, a three-Michelin-star restaurant, and was “named France’s best young student sommelier” in 2023. At the end of the night, he did say that he was trying to get more French wines on the menu – an agenda I can get behind.

So what’s new about it? Your favourite pastry shop is now a convenient spot for after-work drinks and snacks, spearheaded by people who know what they’re doing.

What are the vibes?

The Glou Glou bones are very much rooted in its daytime offering, so the nighttime vibes haven’t quite reached their full potential yet (easily remedied with dimmer lighting and a few candles here and there, perhaps). However, it is clearly a considered space, complete with a fit-out that will appeal to the yo-pros of the area – dusty green banquettes and booth seating, warm wood and gridded tables.

Best of all, and something that many diners have noted in Google reviews: you can actually hear yourself and your dining companion talking. This is a greatly underrated quality – you would not believe the amount of times I have arrived home only to realise my voice had broken under the strain of a noisy restaurant. Plus, wine bars are for gossip, so, happily, Glou Glou has ideal conditions for this (just make sure to do the Wellington swivel, ie checking that no one you know is within hearing distance).

What should I order?

We went for the $49 “Feed Me” menu, which was a “trust the chef” deal. We did ask Paul – of Instagram fame, previously mentioned above – what was included but he encouraged going in blind. So we did. 

However, I feel like the format of this place encourages the snacks to act as a side-character accompaniment to the wine which, I would add, is on average a very reasonable $13 per glass pour, including from local natty wine favourites like Bryterlater and 15 Minute Bottles. I opted for a delicious chilled red.

So: have a conversation with Paul about what you like, order a glass of that, then start with spiced popcorn, pitted olives and bread. If you’re hungry, add on sourdough with spiced pumpkin dip with feta and fried sage leaves on top. Then move on to the smoked warehou beignets, which were hot and salty on a bed of creamy sauce – everything you want in a bar snack, especially going into winter. And then the lamb tonnato – tender, thinly shaved lamb rump, fried capers and a fistful of leaves on top, which added a bright pepperiness. Best served alongside a yap-filled catch-up with a colleague or friend. Life really can be so beautiful.

What’ll it set me back?

We spent $138 for two ($69 each), which included two $49 feed menus and three glasses of wine between us. You get quite a lot of food for $49 each: we had the aforementioned spiced popcorn, olives, smoked warehou beignets and lamb tonnato, plus a chicken vol au vent and mushroom rigatoni. 

You could easily drop in and spend around $50 per person for two glasses of wine each and snacks – not bad.