Three rooms · one kitchen brigade · one supplier list
Dining
A dining room at the top of the building, a bar at the bottom facing the water, and a room on level one that does breakfast for the whole hotel and then keeps going until nine. Everything is cooked in the same kitchen and bought from the same twenty-one suppliers.
Roseneath
Named for the suburb on the hill directly behind us, which is where most of the staff who have been here longest happen to live.
Dinner five nights a week at the top of the building, with the harbour on one side and the hill on the other. Forty-one of the seventy-four seats are at the window and we do not charge more for them.
The kitchen has had the same head chef since 2018 and buys from a list that has barely changed in that time: fish through the Wellington market most mornings, lamb and beef from two farms in the Wairarapa, vegetables from Ōtaki, cheese from Kāpiti, bread baked downstairs at four in the morning. The menu changes when what is on it stops being good, which in practice is five or six times a year.
The terrace seats eighteen and opens when the wind is under about twenty-five knots. That is a real threshold, checked at four in the afternoon, and it is why terrace seats are confirmed on the day rather than booked in advance.
- DinnerTuesday to Saturday, 5:30pm–9:30pm. Last booking 8:45pm.
- À la carteThree courses around NZ$96. Six mains, four of them from the sea.
- Tasting menuFive courses NZ$135, or NZ$225 with wines. Whole table only, ordered by 8pm.
- Wine240 labels, 96 from Martinborough and the wider Wairarapa. Twenty-two by the glass. Corkage NZ$25 a bottle, one bottle a table.
- DietariesTell us when you book, not when you sit down, and the kitchen will cook you something rather than remove things from a plate.
- ChildrenWelcome until 7:30pm. There is no separate menu; there are half portions of anything.
- DressWhatever you have. People come up from the harbour in walking shoes and that is fine.
- Booking+64 4 894 2126, 10am–9pm, or through the enquiry form.
The Carter
For the fountain out in the bay, which has been throwing water twelve metres into the air since 1973 and stops only for maintenance and for gales.
Forty-six seats, a concrete ceiling nobody has painted, and glass along the whole harbour wall. In a good southerly the spray reaches the window and the bar fills up.
Fifty-one gins, nineteen of them made in New Zealand, and a bartender who will talk you out of the expensive one if the cheaper one is better in the drink you want. Twenty-two wines by the glass, changed on a Tuesday. Six taps, four of them from Wellington breweries, one of which is four hundred metres away.
Food is a short list until ten — oysters when they are good, a flatbread, a plate of Kāpiti cheese, the best chips in the building — sent down from the level nine kitchen in the service lift.
- HoursMidday to midnight Sunday–Thursday; to 1am Friday and Saturday.
- FoodUntil 10pm, seven days.
- BookingNot taken. Forty-six seats and first come.
- AgeAll ages until 8pm; 18 and over after, as the licence requires.
Chaffers
Named for the dock two hundred metres along the waterfront, which was a working wharf until 1968 and is now apartments and a market.
Where the hotel eats breakfast, and then keeps going. Ninety seats, no dress code, high chairs stacked by the door rather than hidden in a cupboard.
Breakfast is a buffet plus a short cooked list, included in every room rate. Bread and pastry are baked in the same kitchen at four in the morning; the coffee is roasted in Newtown and the machine is a proper one, run by someone who was hired to run it.
From eleven it becomes the all-day room: soup, a couple of sandwiches, fish and chips that are genuinely good, a pasta, and a roast on Sunday that sells out by half past one. It is also where conference lunches happen, so between twelve and one on a weekday it can be busy in a way the rest of the hotel never is.
- Breakfast6:30–10:30 weekdays, 7:00–11:00 weekends. Included in the room rate; NZ$36 for anyone not staying.
- All day11am–9pm, seven days.
- Sunday roastFrom noon. Around forty portions and no more.
- BookingNot needed except for six or more.
Room service, and what happens after eleven
The full menu runs from six in the morning to eleven at night, taken on the room telephone by somebody in the building rather than a call centre. Nothing on it costs more than it does downstairs; there is a NZ$7 tray charge and that is the whole of the difference.
Between eleven at night and six in the morning there is a short list — a toasted sandwich, a bowl of soup, a cheese plate, tea — cooked by whoever is on night shift. It exists because the gaming lounge closes at three and people are hungry at three.
| Room | Where | Hours | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roseneath | Level 9 | Tue–Sat 5:30–9:30pm | 74 + 18 |
| The Carter | Ground | Daily from midday | 46 |
| Chaffers | Level 1 | 6:30am–9pm | 90 |
| In-room dining | Everywhere | 6am–11pm, short list overnight | — |
| Private dining | Point Jerningham Studio | By arrangement | 30 |
