A very pleasant day on the outskirts of Keri Keri yesterday.
We had brunch and dinner at the same restaurant, the Plough and Feather which is across the road from the Stone Store and Kemp House, two of the oldest buildings in NZ, and a short walk from our motel. The waitresses were wearing a very flattering olive green T shirt which I liked so much I persuaded them to let me buy one.
After brunch we’d had the foresight to book a wine tour. Luckily the tour guide had managed to persuade another couple to come along when he’d met them by chance in Paihia at dinner the night before, because four people was the minimum people to run a tour. They were a lovely couple from Tauranga, Mike was ex army and Sheree was Maori with a moku and they were married with grown up kids. They weren’t wine people at all, which meant the afternoon had very minimal amounts of wine snobbery going on which was very refreshing. The only time it was a handicap for them was when they bought a bottle of dessert wine and were dismayed to find it came in a very small bottle. Matt, our tour guide, was the owner and manger of his tour company. They have been very hard hit by COVID, and he has had to downsize quite sharply. Normally he looks after ninety people a day but since March he’s down to an average of six. The loss of cruise ships has been a major factor.
Today we drove north to Taipa. We made it to Mangonui before the rain started, and that’s where we had brunch. I had a very nice breakfast croissant but Simon had a deconstructed seafood chowder that made him very cross. First he had to peel his prawns, which made such a mess he had to go to the bathroom and wash his hands, the tiny finger bowl he’d been provided with not being up to the task. I had a hard time keeping the marauding seagulls away from his meal while he was away. The water pistol on our outside table suddenly made sense. Once he’d peeled the prawns, there was actually very little food left, and having decided the prawns weren’t adequately cooked, it ended up being a very short meal. The waitresses were very slow taking away our plates so in the end we just left the seagulls to it. It took them ten seconds to empty his plate once we’d walked away. I felt a bit guilty about that but surely it’s not our job to babysit our food remnants until the wait staff can get there?
We drove on in the rain to Taipa, which is a tiny village which my family had a bach in when I was growing up. This is why I still have very sentimental feelings about Northland, with it’s pohutukawa trees fringing the golden sandy beaches. Of course we had our share of wet days during the holidays when I was growing up too. We are staying at a flash resort which was built in the nineties, and has always seemed very much out of place here in such a deprived area. We’ve just got back to our room after a very interesting meal. They warned us that the kitchen closes at 8pm, so we turned up early for our 7 pm booking. When we explained that we had a booking for 7 but were early, they were dismayed. We didn’t really understand why, but agreed to sit at the bar while they got our table ready. I ordered a pina colada, which wrong-footed the poor hapless teenage barman even more, even though it was listed on the bar menu. After several minutes, and seeing him ask a waitress whether the bottle of stout he was holding was a lager (“but it says Monteiths!”), we gave up and ordered wine instead, and I must say, he gave a very generous pour.
At 7 pm, they showed us to our table – a table set for seven people. This confused us for a few moments until we realised there had been a communication breakdown about our table for 7. Once this was cleared up, everything was plain sailing and we had a very nice meal, during which we were both brave enough to order the seafood chowder which was exactly as tradition demands and none the worse for that – delicious.