Dining
The Milling Room
Eighty-four seats over two rooms, one kitchen, and a menu that changes when the Canterbury produce changes rather than when the season is announced.
The room
The larger room seats sixty-two under the original rafters. The smaller one, behind the fireplace, seats twenty-two and takes bookings for groups up to sixteen with the doors closed. Both look north over the flat, which at this height means the whole city is the view from about half the tables.
Breakfast runs 6.30 to 10 on weekdays and 7 to 10.30 at weekends. Dinner is 5.30 to 9.30, seven days, with last orders at 9. There is no lunch service in the restaurant — The Bridle Path Bar serves food from midday to nine, and that is where the hill traffic eats.
Bookings are taken by telephone on +64 3 337 4180 or through the enquiry form. Hotel guests are not held a table automatically; the restaurant fills on Friday and Saturday from about six.
What the kitchen cooks
Three courses from the set menu at NZ$78, or the carte, or both mixed — nobody minds. The set menu changes every three weeks and always has one plate a vegetarian would order by choice rather than by default.
| Lamb | From a farm at Hororata, forty minutes west. Whole animals, so the menu follows the carcass rather than the cut. |
|---|---|
| Salmon | Akaroa, off the harbour, delivered Tuesday and Friday. |
| Cheese | Barrys Bay, on Banks Peninsula. Four on the board, never more, because five means one of them is old. |
| Bread | Made downstairs from four in the morning. It goes to the bar as well. |
| Vegetables | Canterbury growers between November and May; South Island cold-store the rest of the year, and the menu says so. |
| Wine | Ninety-one labels. Sixty-two of them from Waipara and North Canterbury, eleven by the glass. |
Prices, plainly
Breakfast NZ$29 full or NZ$19 continental, free for under-fives, half price to twelve. Set menu NZ$78 for three courses, NZ$62 for two. Mains on the carte run NZ$34 to NZ$49. Sunday roast at midday in the bar, NZ$36, from the first Sunday in May to the end of September.
Corkage is NZ$18 a bottle and we do not pretend to like it, but it is there. Groups of eight or more go on one bill; the kitchen will not split a table nine ways at half past nine.
Dietary requirements are cooked, not adapted — tell the desk when you book and the kitchen writes its own version of the plate. Coeliac, dairy, shellfish and nut are all routine here.
Room service and the rest of the building
Room service runs from the bar menu, midday to eleven, with a NZ$6 tray charge that does not go up after nine. Breakfast can go to the room at the same price as the restaurant if it is ordered the night before.
Neither the restaurant nor the bar serves anyone into The Rimu Room, and no drink leaves the gaming room either. That is a house rule rather than a legal one, and it keeps both rooms behaving the way they should.
Private dining in the smaller room is NZ$400 minimum spend midweek and NZ$800 on Friday and Saturday, which most tables of twelve reach without trying.
