Food Friday - Matterhorn

Hi everyone :)

While I was In New Zealand, my host parents took me out for an amazing dinner to a restaurant called Matterhorn.

And boy can their chef cook. It was food heaven people, trust me I have never loved a meal this much!

And it is not only about the food but the service and design of the place as well. Everything just came together and made it a perfect evening.

It would have been pretty special anyway with being reunited with the 2 most amazing people of my second family but eating at Matterhorn gave it the final touch.

As soon as you walk in you are greeted by nice people who take you to your table, as the restaurant is quite well visited we had to wait for a bit, but got offered a place a the bar and just had drinks first.

When we got asked what we wanted to name our table (so they could let us know as soon as it was ready) and my host parents told them we would name it Jana bear they even took the time to listen to the story behind that.

So we took our seats at the bar and ordered some drinks.

They have this light bulbs set up above the seats at the bar, but they are not fully light so they are glowing kind off orange which gave the whole room a really warm atmosphere. And had us wondering how they did that for quite a while :)

Matterhorn taken from TripAdvisor 

It is quite dark in the whole restaurant as all their lights are not fully light but that just makes it so much more comfortable and it kind off makes the whole thing a bit more private. Sadly that meant that taking pictures of our food was a bit hard too but I think we still did quite well :D

So after we got taken to our table, we were handed the menus. Now at Matterhorn you don't just get your dish and are done with it, their menu is set out to be shared and the waitress kindly took her time to advise on how we would be getting the most out of this.

On their menu they have various starters as well as meaty mains and vegie ones and for three people you are supposed to get between 5 and 6 dishes. 

This is were the service at Matterhorn started to really blow us away.  Because my host dad is allergic to quite a lot of things, including fruit, tomatoes and nuts,  eating out can become a bit of a hassle. Well not if you are going to this particular restaurant!

We told them about his allergies and our waitress took our menu to their chef and had him mark all the things my host dad could eat and the chef even was kind enough to switch the oils he used in some of his dishes so my host dad could have them. It was a really nice thing to do and actually allowed us to have way more things then we first thought.

We settled for olives infused with garlic & rosemary for a started which my host dad couldn't have because they were marinated with lemon oil or something of that matter but they were really good.

Our main courses came on various platters and in bowls and we weren't really able to tell where what went so I'll just list what we had and you can all try and figure out which is which :D

So we had:

Gratin of red cabbage, date, parmesan & caramelised red apple
pot roast pork loin, baked apple, pink peppercorn, baby turnip & cider sauce

roast wagyu fat potatoes, toasted hay, buttermilk, crisp sage & almond beurre noisette

roquefort, poached pear, candied walnuts, honeycomb, chicory & fig vincotta

whole merino lamb leg, cumin butter, charred lemon, aubergine brinjal & coriander yoghurt

this did not look as yellow in real life :D

And this is what our table looked like :)

It was so much food and it was soooooo good. I think we only ate all of it because it was so freaking delicious. Like I said we found food heaven that night!

I especially liked the idea of sharing since I am someone who hates that I can only ever choose one thing of the menu. Usually I make the person that goes with me have the second choice I had but this time I didn't have to :D

It was perfect.

We had such a good time and the evening was topped off with the chef making a special dessert for us since my host dad couldn't have any of the dishes on the menu. 

We really did feel spoiled when we left.

It truly was an amazing evening, with incredibly delicious food, so so lovely waitresses and great conversation.

I can highly recommend this place!!!

If you wanna know what else is on their menu just check out their website or say hi on twitter.

x

J.