Another day focused on eating (that’s one of the main reasons why folks come to Waiheke!) We were lucky that our time here was over a weekend - dinner is only available on Fri/Sat at most places.
We had lunch reservations at The Oyster Inn, in Oneroa. On the way in we stopped at the Ostend Market (it’s open Saturdays). It has a real community feel to it. We browsed through the stalls, some of the food stalls looked amazing if we didn’t already have lunch plans.
Anyways onto Oneroa. We were a few minutes early for our lunch reservation so checked out some of the art galleries along the main strip.
The Oyster Inn is in a prime location on the strip, with its 2nd-floor balcony overlooking the street and the bay beyond. We had the Te Matuku Bay oysters which were excellent, deep shelled like those from Bruny Island but meatier. We also had crudo with avocado, another popular dish in NZ, here served with wasabi peas. I tried a Pale Ale from Alibi Brewing Co, run by the same folks who own Tantalus, where we were having dinner tonight.
On the way back home, we drove up Trig Hill past our bnb to the lookout point, as suggested by our taxi driver yesterday. It had also been mentioned in Waiheke Local when I was surfing on what to do here. Anyways it’s a really cool lookout point, and relatively unknown. Great views of the island and its bays and inlets, as well as across to Auckland.
We had dinner at Tantalus Estate, which shows up on lists of top places to eat in Waiheke and also Auckland. (It’s not uncommon for folks from Auckland to just come to Waiheke for dinner).
On Saturday the only option is their tasting menu, paired with their wines. The food was really good, although we did find the courses a bit busy. The real star was their wines, which were all excellent. Unfortunately they don’t export to Canada.
Most other folk got up to walk around the vineyard in the middle of their dinners, a sort of 7th inning stretch as Heather called it. So we did that too, just before sunset. It’s actually not a bad idea for a longer meal.
It turned out our server was from Ajax, a suburb of Toronto. Five of the staff, as well as one of the owners were also Canadian, and over the dinner they all took turns coming over to chat. This was more Canadians than we had seen over the rest of our trip combined!
Our taxi ride home got a bit delayed (another customer was in a hurry and the owner asked if we minded getting bumped). The owner offered us another wine sampling, and then took us on a tour of the bar and private dining room in the cellar (and then also covered our taxi fare). It was quite cool to see the cellar.
Anyways it was a nice unofficial end to our long vacation. (The next few days are just getting home).
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