New Zealand Trip 2023 Day 2 Part 2 ~ Waiheke Island

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And it was time for lunch at Mudbrick! Pretty nice restaurant and the dishes were quite well balalnced. 

We asked for warm water and they served us with lemons! 


Amuse Bouche.




Our view of the vineyard over lunch.


We went with the 3 course menu
Starting with:
Scallop Crudo
PISTACHIO CREAM, KOJI ICE CREAM, PARSNIP 


Seared Pork Loin
BLACK GARLIC, ROASTED YEAST, LEEK


Our mains.
Prime Steer Eye Fillet
MUSHROOM BEIGNET, BEEF CHEEK ROULADE, OX TOUNGE, SQUID INK



HAURAKI GULF CATCH
Dashi Buerre Blanc, Tobiko, Paua Saucission, Celeriac, Lionsmane


Our choice of red and white to pair with our mains. We chose not to go with the wine pairing since we planned to do wine tasting later that day.



Our desserts:

Chocolate
OLIVE OIL SABLE, PASSIONFRUIT


They've since changed this dessert but this was a  moist cake with coconut and grapes with gochujang.
COCONUT
Gochujang, Grapes


Rose with dessert.



After this, we set off with a rather long walk downhill before hopping on a bus to the other side of the islands to visit more wineries.














Wine tasting at Stonyridge. 
Service was lacking TBH, they didn't bother to explain the wine just leaving this description there despite the restaurant being less than half full. 




Walked past Tantalus Estate which was closed. This was our first choice to have lunch but unfortunately closed on Tue.







The walk in towards Te Motu Vineyard, which we turned back halfway since we werent planning to drink anymore.



We just took some photos and left to catch the bus.






We missed the bus and so we went back to Wild to take some photos while waiting. The bus frequency was far and between, which I guess is the standard for NZ.




It started raining quite heavily when we were still at Waiheke. We stopped by Ostend before heading back to the ferry terminal. And after we were back in Auckland, it was still raining. So we headed straight for our dinner reso at Hello Beasty, a 2 hats restaurant! We didn't know beforehand till we saw it after making the payment lol.

We had cocktails since we had enough wine for the day lol.



The menu is Asian-inspired, with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean flavors. I eliminated all Szechuan pepper dishes at the outset lol.

Hokkaido scallop, free-range pork + shrimp potstickers 
Garlic shoots, ginger,
spring onion, crunchy chili, light soy


Prawn + crab toast 
Seared grain-fed eye fillet, sweet + sour
sauce, Japanese mayo, green onions


Roasted Hapuka South Island scampi, 
Gourmet agria potatoes, kale, confit garlic,
umeboshi salsa verde, yuzu + finger lime
butter sauce


Kkwabaegi twisted donuts
Miso caramel, chocolate fudge sauce


It was still drizzling when we left and we returned to our very near hotel! We ended the day early, but I still struggled to fall asleep which was a pity as I really liked Ohtel.
That's all for day 2!

~ New Zealand Trip 2023 ~

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