Veggie Bites

We looked at a couple of places for lunch before heading back to this one – let me just say this – there are not good options for vegetarians in Hokitika! Now I will probably get a stack of emails saying that there are – but we certainly couldn’t find them! I ordered the Wild Westcoast breakfast (despite the fact that it was lunch time!) without the bacon and sausage – which left hash browns, tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs and toast, the girl who served us was kind enough to ask if I would like extra of something, or if I would like her to make it cheaper – I opted for cheaper – I was amazed as that was the first time anyone had asked me that! Martin ordered the maple hotcake without bacon – his was just the same price! He was a little disappointed because it was smaller than he expected, so he tried to convince me to give him some of my hash browns – at first I decided not a chance (being a potato head and all that), but then I felt sorry for him and gave him some. The food was pretty good, but there were not a lot of vegetarian choices. It is not that I wouldn’t go back here in particular, just that I wouldn’t bother with Hokitika in general (well except for the amazing glass shop!).

This was pretty much our only option for dinner in Hokitika, unless we wanted pizza – which we didn’t! We ordered tandoori mushrooms, Palak Paneer, Veggie Korma and asked for a half size of red lentil dhal, which they couldn’t do, so we went with the whole one. We also had raita and a garlic naan and a plain naan. This place did one of my pet hates and asked us what temperature we would like our dishes and we tried, yet again, to get them the way the chef recommends, but to most restaurant staff that just means medium! The food was pretty good. I wasn’t overly keen on the mushrooms – they were not cooked enough for my liking. But the rest of it was good, but not fantastic – it didn’t stand out as wonderful in any way. Certainly, if you want veggie food in Hokitika, then I would recommend this place!

Yet again – a hotel breakfast – this wasn’t room service, instead we ate in the restaurant – again because we wanted to get an early start to a big drive! It was your standard thing, made to order omelettes cost extra (strange!) and we thought it was a little on the expensive side… Nothing outstanding here!

This was a tiny little place in a pretty small town, and we stopped here because it was the first place we saw and we weren’t sure there would be anything else. They didn’t have a lot of veggie options on the menu, and we were not very hungry anyway. We both had a cheese, tomato and pineapple toasted sandwich and a hot chocolate. To their credit, it was quick, well made and hot – just what we wanted on a cold rainy, day!

We were really not sure what we could eat here. This was one of three places recommended by the hotel, but I was pretty convinced that we would end up with pizza! This place ended up being pretty good – it really is a bar that does good food! There were a number of veggie things to choose from on the menu and we went for the crumbed camembert with plum sauce to share and then I had the veggie nachos and Martin went with the warm veggie salad. The crumbed camembert was divine – as it should have been – it was deep fried! But the plum sauce was a fantastic touch and complemented it very well. The veggie nachos were huge and pretty good, although the corn chips underneath got pretty soggy! Martin said his warm veggie salad was pretty good, but I thought it tasted a little bland – but it wasn’t something I was in the mood for. We also had a couple of Speight’s beers – how could we not when we were in a Speight’s bar that far away from the actual brewery in Dunedin! All in all a good meal, and if I would definitely recommend it!

This was pretty much the first place we saw after parking the car, and we were hungry so we decided to eat here! I had an omelette with onion, tomato and cheese, and without ham! I also had a side of hash browns – these were your normal run of the mill hash browns, which was a little disappointing after the last few times I ordered hash browns at other places! The omelette was pretty good and it all came with a couple of pieces of toast – one grainy and one white. Martin ordered scrambled eggs, muesli and we both had an orange juice. There were no complaints from him, but there was certainly nothing that made these meals stand out from any others that we had – in fact, they would probably have been some of the more average meals we ate. And lastly – the orange juice was horrible!

We were not really hungry, but decided we should eat something before going on our glow worm tour, following which we were driving back to Queenstown! I had a (pre-packed) tomato sandwich and Martin had a piece of spinach, feta and pine nut quiche – which simply came by itself. I think this place is mainly a bakery, but it has tables and does table food. It is good simple food without flair and is reasonably priced. It also does excellent gourmet take away sandwiches. A great place for something simple to eat!

We found this place by accident, and when Martin suggested we eat here I jumped at the chance – maybe I was craving Mexican food, maybe I just felt like something different, maybe I was craving a bit of chilli, or maybe it was a mixture of all three! We ordered a small jug of standard margaritas along with the mixed entradas (is that really Mexican for entrée!?!) to start. The entradas consisted of corn chips with three different dips – salsa, guacamole and holy frijoles (bean and cheese). We were asked whether we wanted our salsa mild, medium and hot, and without even thinking about it, we both said hot – same for our mains! The dips were great and the corn chips were really, really good. Martin ordered a bean and a vegetable enchilada, while I had my old favourite – vegetarian fajitas. These meals were huge! And my slight annoyance at the waitress who took away our close to finished entrée saying that we should leave room for our mains disappeared! The food was great – the fajita mix was delicious, but included big chunks of garlic that I tried to avoid! Of course, neither of us managed to completely finish our mains and there was no way that we were going to be able to fit in dessert! I love Mexican food and this place did not disappoint me!

This was a gorgeous hotel and I think the best one that we stayed in while we were in New Zealand. It included breakfast, but sadly I was not feeling 100%, so I decided to skip the cooked bit. However, Martin had it and it looked and smelled delicious. They put on a fabulous spread of toast, cheese, fruit, cereals etc and made poached eggs with bacon and tomato on a muffin – of course Martin skipped the bacon!

We went to Milford Sound to do a cruise to see all the sights. The lonely planet guide said there wasn’t much here, but I assumed there would be more than one single building that did food and information! It was a cafeteria type thing and they truly have a captive market – three hours drive from the nearest possibility of other food! All that considered, they did actually have a couple of veggie choices. You order your hot food by the plate size and a medium plate (NZ$14) gives you one main and two sides. We both chose the veg pasta – which was just penne with a basic tomato sauce, I chose roasted potatoes and coleslaw and Martin had chips and garden salad. All in all, it wasn’t too bad.