Dining
Seventy-four covers in the old ballroom, a menu rewritten every Tuesday around what arrived, and a small dark bar off the hall with a fire in it from May.
Bracken still crowds the gully behind the house and comes back every year no matter what is done about it. The room was named after it in 2009, partly out of respect and partly out of defeat.
A short menu, rewritten every Tuesday.
The Bracken Dining Room is the old ballroom on the north side of the ground floor: seventy-four covers under the original plaster ceiling, with a floor relaid in 2008 from boards taken out of the stables. Dinner is served every night of the year except Christmas Day, from 6pm to 9.30pm. Lunch runs Friday to Sunday from noon.
The menu is deliberately short — six entrées, seven mains, four puddings — and it is rewritten each Tuesday around whatever has arrived. Most of it comes from within two hours of the front door: Merino lamb from the Maniototo, blue cod landed at Karitane, Whitestone cheeses out of Oamaru, apricots from the Cromwell basin for about five weeks each summer, and Bluff oysters from March to August while the season holds.
Tables are held for house guests until 8pm. Outside diners are welcome and about a third of the room on a normal Saturday is people who are not staying. Booking is sensible from Thursday to Sunday and essential in January.
What is usually on it
The kitchen does not do tasting menus and will not send out anything under a cloche. What it does well is one good piece of protein, cooked properly, with two things beside it that were grown nearby. In winter that means venison from the Maniototo, brassicas and a lot of butter. In February it means cold blue cod, apricots, and someone eating outside on the terrace at nine at night because the light will not go.
The wine list runs to 212 labels, of which 96 are from Otago and North Otago. Corkage is NZ$25 a bottle and we will not be sniffy about it.
- DinnerNightly, 6.00pm – 9.30pm
- LunchFri – Sun, 12.00pm – 2.30pm
- BreakfastDaily, 6.30am – 10.30am
- Covers74, plus 18 in the Library
- Set menuNZ$95 for three courses
- Closed25 December
Breakfast, and the argument about it
Breakfast is served in the dining room from 6.30am to 10.30am, cooked to order rather than held under lamps. NZ$34 a head, included in three of the five packages. There is a buffet counter for fruit, yoghurt, the baking and the bread, and everything hot comes off the pass.
We are told regularly that 6.30am is too early to bother. It is there for the people catching the 8.05 out of Momona, and it stays.
Packages that include itLing is the heather that gave the hill its name and the house its name after that. It is also, unhelpfully, a fish. The bar is named for the plant.
A small dark room with a serious back bar.
The Ling Bar is off the main hall, seats thirty-four, and was the morning room until 2009. It opens at 4pm and closes at midnight on weeknights and 1am at the weekend. There is a fire in it from May to September and it is lit by hand at half past three.
The whisky list is 41 bottles, of which nine are New Zealand and the rest mostly Islay and Speyside, plus three Japanese that we cannot replace when they run out. Cocktails are a short list of eight, made properly and without theatre. There is no list of shots and there will not be one.
Bar snacks come from the Bracken kitchen until 10pm, and the cheese board runs until close. Guests under twenty are welcome in the Ling Bar until 8pm with an adult, which is a hotel rule rather than a legal one — the gaming lounge downstairs is a different matter entirely and is twenty and over at all times.
Monday to Thursday
4.00pm – 12.00am. Snacks from the Bracken kitchen until 10pm.
Friday and Saturday
4.00pm – 1.00am. Someone plays the piano on Fridays from about eight, badly and with great commitment.
Sunday
4.00pm – 11.00pm. The fire is lit from May to September.
Private dining
The Bracken Library seats eighteen around one kauri table and is the room most people mean when they ring about private dining. It has its own door, its own fireplace, and a wall of books that came with the house and have never been catalogued. Minimum spend applies on Friday and Saturday evenings; there is none from Sunday to Thursday.
Larger parties go to the Heriot Room, which takes sixty seated, or the Long Room at one hundred and eighty. Both can be served the dining room menu or a set menu written for the night.
- Bracken Library18 around one table
- The Heriot Room60 seated
- The Long Room180 seated · 240 standing
- NoticeFive days for a written menu
Room service and the night tray
The full dining room menu goes to rooms from 6pm to 9.30pm and a shorter list runs until 11pm. After that there is the night tray: soup, a sandwich, cheese, and a pot of tea, left outside the door if you would rather not open it. The night porter makes it himself and it takes about twenty minutes.
Breakfast can be sent up from 6.30am and needs to be ordered the night before if you want it before seven.
- Full menu6.00pm – 9.30pm
- Short listUntil 11.00pm
- Night tray11.00pm – 6.00am
- Tray chargeNZ$8
Book a table, or a room with a table waiting.
Telephone the dining room direct on +64 3 477 2818 between 9am and 9pm, or send an enquiry and we will call you back.