Visa WOAP Festival Team

2018 Visa WOAP Finalists

What you've all been waiting for! Announcing the top 5 Burgers, Cocktails and Festival Dishes for 2018, as determined by you (alphabetical order). Winners announced Monday 3 September.

Our finalists are generously opening their doors to allow you a last taste of their burgers, cocktails and dine dishes with some limited availability due to overwhelming popularity of the festival this year. See below for details.

A big thanks to all who scored and rated and congratulations to all the finalists!

Finalists judging

Over the next week, a team of judges will be visiting finalists and judging each entry against criteria such as service, presentation, taste, use of local ingredients, Wellington Wine Region/Garage Project beer or tapas match. Final scores are a combination of judges and public ratings.

Our judges for 2018 are:

Max Olijnyk

Max is a writer, editor, publisher, photographer and sour dough enthusiast. His work has appeared in The Age, Vice, Broadsheet, The Guardian and Smith Journal.

Jackie Lee Morrison

Jackie has recently moved to New Zealand from London, where she worked as a pastry chef in Claridges, and Michelin-star French eatery Galvin La Chapelle. She now has her own company called Lashings selling high end single origin chocolate brownies

Jos Ruffell

Jos is co-owner of Garage Project, he is the creative force of the brewery and always pushing the boundaries on what a humble brewery from little old New Zealand can be.

Kelly Ryan

Kelly is a brewer by trade and International beer judge. Trained in microbiology, particularly around aroma and possess a supertaster palate.

Riki Carter

Riki is an international cocktail judge, winner of numerous cocktail competitions including the Havana Club Cocktail Grand Prix

Sam Dinsdale

Sam left New Zealand to worked under Gordon Ramsay with the goal of not returning until she had a Michelin star of her own. She was awarded that this year, so she's finally returned to her home town ready for a new chapter.

Winners announced Monday 3 Sept 2018

Worthy mentions

We use a pretty complex algorithm that analyses your scores to bring you these 15 finalists, BUT there’s still an abundance of other dishes and cocktails that were deemed very tasty and just missed the cut.

We bring you a short summary and shout out to the following (alphabetical):





