Prime Rib of Hereford
 

Chocolate Decadence  

As New Zealanders, we have to be the luckiest people in the world when it comes to fresh raw ingredients. We were brought up running out to the vegetable garden to dig up a bowl of tiny new potatoes, grabbing a stalk of mint on the way back into the kitchen, getting there just in time to pop them into the pot, and eating them 15 minutes later with our national mascot, lamb. This is how it was, and still is for most New Zealanders, if we don’t grow it, then our neighbor more than likely will.

Another contributing factor to freshness is that we have not been bombarded with tasteless imported foods, allowing us to have strawberries all year round. Here we are very seasonal, and we get excited anticipating our first meal of asparagus (after all, we’ve waited 9 months for it) and then saddened as we all too quickly munch our way through the last, only to be re-excited by the first peach, and so on it goes all year.

Our seafood is exceptional, and we’re famous for our green lipped mussels. It is hard to feel as though you’re not bragging as you serve up a bowl full to a mussel loving guest.

Here at the Motueka River Lodge, we live in the perfect cooking environment, a kitchen full of guests most of the time (always a compliment), happily fulfilling individual food requirements. It`s like having a dinner party every night, enriched by ever changing conversation and laughter as guests come and go.

As the famous French Gourmand, Brillat Savarin, once said "To entertain a guest is to be responsible for his happiness while he is under your roof".
Here is a sample menu served at the lodge.

On entering the magnificent gates of the Motueka River Lodge, you will pass through our own private vineyard. You could say that these wines are amongst the rarest in the world, being that we only produce around 150 cases.

These Chardonnay grapes are lovingly cared for by Maurice Grooby, our Groundsman and then made into a beautiful wine by Tim Finn, owner and winemaker of Neudorf Wines, one of New Zealand's top 5 winemakers. Robert Parker said of Tim's Moutere Chardonnay, "This is a dead ringer for Bartarde Montrachet" 94/100.