A taste of the deep
An afternoon of exploring the Kaikoura Peninsula was followed by a seafood feast. Alastair Paulin reports.
Is it weird to want to eat seafood at the seaside? It is a time-honoured tradition but once you start pondering, what is it about watching seals frolic and shearwaters soar that makes the idea of mowing down on mussels and crayfish so appealing? It is not as if a day spent walking in the woods turns us into foragers.
Do we have some hard-wired code that makes us crave the diet of the predators we have been admiring? I’ve never been on safari, but does watching lions feast make tourists hungry for wildebeest?
These esoteric ideas were on my mind as I sat in a full house Pier Hotel in Kaikoura on a Saturday night. Every other table seemed to be getting crayfish and those that weren’t were going for a seafood platter with a handful of large green-lipped mussels poking up from a small bowl in the middle.
Maybe it was just the way the spiny, sharp-edged crayfish and mussel shells poked up from the plates that had me in predator mode. These were not soft dishes to be savoured, these were meals made for attacking.
The plates came stacked high with beer-battered fries and salad, although one bite of the attractivelooking salad made me wish I’d ordered vegetables instead. The lettuce was soggy, the dressing tasteless and then I realised I’d never been offered the option anyway.
Our servers were a rotating international cast who seemed too busy to think through details like making sure you had a spoon before serving a soup, a steak knife to separate slabs of ribs or that there was more than a lonely squirt in the belatedly delivered bottle of tomato sauce.
There was a sign in the window that said it was a full house and not to bother unless you’d made a reservation. With the town bursting at the seams in the middle of the school holidays, we were glad we had.
In summer, the evening views from the Pier over the sea and mountains must be gorgeous but even in autumn it is an attractive dining room, with high ceilings, an elevated second dining room and a large mural of the Seaward Kaikouras.
This is a restaurant that knows its niche in Kaikoura’s ecosystem and the menu is essentially two pages: one side is seafood and the other is everything else.
With the exception of the iconoclast 10-year-old, who devoured a plate of tender but too-sweet ribs, we all stuck to the seafood side. Our budget did not run to $90 crayfish but a crayfish chowder was a good way to taste the local delicacy. The chowder was rich with crayfish flavour and the bottom of the bowl was loaded with chunks of crayfish.
The seafood platter included supermarket prawn twisters (still delicious), over-fried squid rings, tasty battered fish bites that may have been the fish of the day, terakihi, a good chunk of smoked salmon fillet, a lemony salmon mousse served in a tiny ramekin, and a surprisingly good wakame (seaweed salad) that brightened the platter and the palate.
My bowl of mussels featured lots of plump, large green-lipped mussels in a coconut cream sauce. The chilli, lime, coriander, lemongrass flavours were all present but too muted, and the mussels themselves were so fresh that I even got a bonus of a couple of tiny crabs that had been trying to enjoy the bivalve before I could. The mussels, like the seafood platter, came with a couple of toasted slices of a delicious bread that may well have been homemade as advertised.
A teen’s plate was piled high with calamari rings, fries and salad and although it was to my taste, he was satisfied (but that soggy salad went untouched).
We had just come from an afternoon of exploring the Kaikoura Peninsula and brought good appetites with us. We were more than satisfied, although somehow that did not stop the boys from demolishing $5 kids’ size sundaes.
My wallet was grateful for the family-friendly touch, and despite some lackadaisical service, overall the Pier delivered the seafood feast we were craving.