Bay of Many Coves Resort

Rating: 4

We ate dinner here in January 2022.

Grazing platter
Duck liver parfait
Tomato and mozzarella
Eye fillet with roast kumara and seasonal vegetables
Pan fried chicken with mashed potato and seasonal vegetables
Dark chocolate tart with pop rocks
Mille-feuille

Bay of Many Coves is a luxury resort in the Marlborough sounds. While we will confine our review to their meals, we will say that our high rating of their food reflects our opinion of the resort as a whole - absolutely fantastic. Note that we are reviewing their guest menus, available exclusively to guests of the resort. There is also a cafe on site where non-guests can visit to dine, but we didn’t eat there because we are too good to mix with that sort of riff-raff. There is no fixed menu at Bay of Many Coves, the meals change based on availability and the chef’s preference.

The charcuterie board we had for lunch was intense, best we’ve ever had. There was so much variety, generally four or five different types of everything eg there was a blue cheese, Camembert, some cheese with wax and some other hard cheese, then four different crackers, for meats there were two different salamis, plus ham and some kind of hot pork, there were apricots, figs, apple, grapes, dates, plus tomatoes, hummus, beetroot dip, macadamias, cashews. It was great fun trying all the different combinations and somehow everything seemed to work together pretty well. It was also beautifully presented on fern fronds.

The tomato and mozzarella was beautifully presented and flavourful. The parfait was tasty but way too much, could have used about half of that. The eye fillet was perfectly cooked and succulent. Some kind of marmite-esque blobs were on the plate and they were a flavour explosion. The mash with the chicken was a standout, don’t know what was in it but it was really good, perhaps the only thing that wasn’t pretty much perfect was the chicken which was slightly dry.

The mille-feuille was perfection, deconstructed and imaginative, every bite was heaven. The dark chocolate tart was one of the best desserts that The Fee-Rex has ever had, the tart filling was molten chocolate with golden pop rocks, and it was perfectly paired with fresh berries, crushed meringue and ice cream.