Tongariro Lodge
Reviews · · · ·Rating: 3
We ate dinner here in October 2022.
Breads and dips
Crispy skin salmon with potato and courgette
Mushroom, walnut, feta, and truffle oil risotto
Broccoli with sesame and soy
Chips
Chocolate brownie
Sticky date pudding
The last time we had the misfortune of dining at Tongoriro Lodge, they crushed us with a disgusting lump of clammy John Dory, and we crushed them with a fittingly poor review. What a turnaround. This meal was really good overall, with a couple of truly great dishes sprinkled in. Unfortunately they didn’t quite do enough to rise to the highest levels in our rating system, but they were knocking on the four door.
The bread was excellent, just delicious fresh bread with really nice dips, including a beetroot dip that was a surprise smash hit. Likewise the risotto was delicious, feta, walnut, and truffle is a flavour combo that you do see from time to time, and there’s good reason for that.
The salmon was nice, but salmon is always going to have an uphill battle to gain the approval of The Fee-Rex who doesn’t really like salmon in general. They had made the courgette into tiny noodles, which was quite fun. The broccoli on the side was really nice, and there was plenty of sesame and soy sauce in the bottom of the bowl, it’s a pity that they couldn’t make the sauce stickier, it was a shame to leave so much in the bottom of the bowl. While the chips themselves were good, we were disappointed to see a little bowl of what was a pretty plain tomato sauce on the side when the menu said that they came with aioli. Our servers were both very friendly and did a great job, they should have spoken to this point, not just plopped it down hoping we wouldn’t notice.
The sticky date pudding was an absolute triumph, perfect in every way, the only way that it could have been improved would have been to come with a second sticky date pudding instead of the brownie that we also ordered. The brownie was more like a dry chocolate cake than a brownie, which is not what you want, especially when the other dessert was just so moist.