Famous Kiwi pub back on the market
One of the country’s most famous pubs could be yours.
The Captain Cook Hotel opened in central Dunedin in 1860, but closed in 2013 because of declining revenue.
However, the pub, known to generations of Dunedin scarfies as The Cook, was reopened two years later following an extreme makeover. The former student watering hole was transformed into a restored gastro pub, including full kitchen menu and themed beers.
Jono Kennedy, of ABC Business Sales Ltd, said the current owners always planned to transform the venue before selling.
Kennedy said it was a chance for a new owner to buy ‘‘New Zealand’s most famous pub’’.
Co-owner Sheldon Lye was unable to be contacted yesterday, but in an interview before the pub’s 2015 reopening said ‘‘Otagoeducated alumni all have a connection back to the Captain Cook, just about every lawyer, every doctor, every dentist, every surveyor’’. ‘‘You can be sitting in a flight lounge in Hanoi and you mention to a Kiwi you are from Dunedin and they say, ‘[I] had a beer at the Captain Cook’.’’
The pub was a favourite with bands during the 1970s and 80s, with some of those original bands, including The Bats, returning to the venue in recent years.
The pub regularly hit the headlines in the 2000s with the annual Cookathon, an all-day student drinking party, before the University of Otago opposed its liquor licence.