Nelson’s Medical Officer of Health wants a place at your table. Not in person, of course, but in spirit.

Last week brought news that Chef Martin Bosley’s degustation event at Te Awhina Marae will come with medically constrained wine pairings. Each of the seven courses on offer can come with no more than 50 ml of wine – or just over three tablespoons. The public health service reportedly worried about drink driving, despite the provision of shuttle services, and about how much wine women in particular should be allowed to drink.

A half-bottle of wine with the meal may sound like it should be enough, but should it really be the Medical Officer of Health’s job to decide how much should be allowed? Licensees are already banned from serving intoxicated people. Should restaurants also be required to serve no more than one bottle per two people at the table over the course of an evening?

We can perhaps look forward to future degustation menus where chefs face strict regulation of how much salt, sugar and fat are allowed in any course, maximum plate sizes to discourage overeating, and minimum broccoli requirements. Perhaps the unhealthiest foods could be artificially coloured to match proposed plain cigarette packages’ unappetising colour.

And I start wondering whether medical officers of health should be evicted from restaurants through the window rather than being kindly shown the door.

ACT’s David Seymour pointed to the problems around special event licenses when he had Parliament provide a special exemption for alcohol service during the Rugby World Cup. Everyone knows that special event licenses would have been possible for those events. But everyone also knows that the police and medical officers of health seem to enjoy layering nonsensical or impracticable conditions onto those licenses. The system is broken and in need of broader remedy.

But the nannying could have been worse, as famed Wellington lawyer-pedant (in the best possible sense of the term) Graeme Edgeler points out.

The Te Awhina Marae dinner is at least going ahead under a special licence. But it is at a Marae. And serving alcohol at a gathering of Māori has its own special difficulties under the Māori Community Development Act 1962, which aims to reduce “unruly behaviour” among Māori.

Getting freedom onto the degustation menu would be rather tasty. And could we have a side order of fixing outdated legislation?