Alpine Restaurant (Mt Cook Village, Canterbury, New Zealand)

It is certainly is one of the best views you can get from a restaurant but how does their food compare with the view? that’s what we are trying to find out.
Usually, every July we travel overseas but due to this pandemic we can’t go out of the country affordably and safely so we decided to just travel domestically and our choice of destination is Queenstown and its surrounding places. It is our first time here and based on the stories of our friends, it’s a place that we will really like. First destination on our journey was Mt Cook, it’s quite a remote place so don’t expect tons of facilities near the area, all you have this this Mt Cook Village which only have five accommodation options, five restaurants, a self-service petrol station, zero convenience stores but a million-dollar worth of views in all direction. We stayed at The Hermitage Hotel during our stay and there is only one restaurant, the Alpine Restaurant.

This restaurant offers breakfast and dinner buffets accompanied with spectacular views of Aoraki Mount Cook from every corner. The breakfast buffet offers the choice of a full cooked or continental breakfast, with a selection of pastries, breads, cereals, fresh fruit juices, tea & coffee. While the dinner buffets offer a wide range of fare including soup, salads, seafood, hot and cold meats and desserts. Booking is quite essential because the hotel is quite large and the restaurant can only cater for a few, so to ensure you can eat at the time you want to dine then its best to book more than a week in advance to get a spot. Don’t try to look for other restaurants or convenience store in the place because most probably other restaurants are full as well and like I said there are no convenience store around.

We learned our lesson as we did not book a spot, what’s even worse we don’t have an idea what Mount Cook was and expected it to be like a town with complete amenities. To make things worse, hotel Wi-Fi was down as well as Cell sites so there are no data on your phone to search for places to eat, but that does not matter because the nearest town that has complete amenities would be Twizel and that’s 45 minutes away via your own car. Now we were left with only two not so good options first is either we wait for 9:30PM to have dinner as that was the earliest free spot that day or we just eat whatever leftovers we had on our bags. We chose the latter since we intend to wake up early for a morning hike at Hooker Valley track.

Breakfast time, luckily during this time no reservations are needed so it was a first come first served basis. We came in really early and we were literally the first customers at the restaurant. Buffet was the only option, selection was OK, the options during that day was a selection of cheeses and cold cuts, Danishes, croissants, sausages, bacon, hashbrowns, mushrooms, baked beans, tomatoes, quiches, eggs benedict, fruits, breads and juices that’s about it. Basically, it’s your stock standard breakfast fare common in most hotels here in New Zealand. There was only one that stood out and it was that crumbled cheese, I am not sure what they are but I am sure they are Whitestone Cheese, it was crumbly, creamy, salty but in a pleasant way, it felt like a cheddar it was smoother than that plus is slightly melts in your mouth. The sausage tasted good as well and same goes with the Danishes, but apart from that it was just average.

After that breakfast we had some slight relief, because if that’s the quality you have for breakfast then the dinner probably would have the same quality too. While is not that bad, I just wish the food quality was at least as par as the amazing view they offer. Luckily the view was one of the best I had seen on a restaurant which made our breakfast one of the best we had for quite a long time.

And yes here are some photos of the hike we did after this breakfast, enjoy!

Alpine Breakfast
Address: The Hermitage Hotel, Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park 89 Terrace Road, Canterbury 7999, New Zealand
Phone: +643 435 1809