KAI CARUMBA!
Is this NZ’s worst town for dinner?
More than a million tourists swarm to its geysers, bask in its hot mudpools and joke about its famous rotten egg smell every year.
But is fine dining in Rotorua little more than a pie or fish and chips? The tourist mecca failed to land a single spot on Cuisine Magazine’s list of 100 best restaurants — and local restaurateurs are not impressed.
The magazine announced its prestigious list in the lead-up to the Cuisine Good Food Awards, to be held at the Civic Theatre, October 15.
Auckland took out a whopping 41 spots, while restaurants in New Zealand’s capital made up another 22.
The rest of the 100 were spread across smaller cities and towns; Central Otago, Canterbury and Hawke’s Bay feature prominently.
Cherry Te Kiri said her Rotorua foodie spot, Atticus Finch, could take on the best of those around the country.
“When I look at that list, it looks like it’s the big cities and the highend fine dining special-occasion type restaurants, predominantly,” she said.
She “absolutely” would have liked to see Rotorua represented on that list but felt several factors made it more difficult for restaurants in smaller cities or the regions.
“I still think that’s pretty poor. We’ve tried really hard to do our best, and we get really good feedback from our customers, but maybe because of our style of food we’re just not on the radar.”
Te Kiri said her menu was often the complimented because of its range of options suiting different tastes and diets.
The vegetarian dishes were as good as those suiting a more meaty palette, she said, and there were two vegan dessert offerings that would rival even the most “boujee” of Auckland spots.
Figures from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment from the year ending July 2018 showed 1.25 million guests had stayed in Rotorua’s commercial accommodation.
Activities like the gondola and the iconic luge at Skyline Rotorua lured 3.29 million visitors, while tourists in the area spent $143.4 million a year on food alone.
A 2010 thesis paper submitted to the Auckland University of Technology by Rose Steinmetz looked at food and tourism in Rotorua — and found the city “lagged behind” other regions in its use of food as a feature.
“With the exception of the traditional Ma¯ ori hangi, the contribution of food in tourism has not been emphasised strongly by regional food/tourism stakeholders,” the paper read. “This study argues that greater use of local food in the region’s tourism offers a means of potentially strengthening the district’s development and differentiation.”
Despite this, the city was renowned as the home of cultural tourism in New Zealand, and boasted an increasing number of menus that incorporated hangi or other traditional Ma¯ori offerings.
One such spot is the Princes Gate Hotel, which offers an “indigenous degustation menu”.
According to David French, direc-
Apart from fish and chips, hot dogs and pies, where are the ethnic Kiwi restaurants?