We stopped at the Cider House Cafe on our way to Queenstown. We wanted lunch, and we needed internet access to find and reserve accommodations in Queenstown. The cafe offered both.
We ordered a vegetarian burger and vegetarian nachos. We expected the burger to have one of the vegetarian equivalents of a meat patty, but it didn’t. Instead, it consisted of fried eggs and sautéed vegetables between two buns. The burger should have been listed on the menu as an egg sandwich. It was edible, but not good.
The nachos were terrible. They were a bed of corn chips with vegetables piled on top, and a sweet salad dressing poured over everything. There were no refried beans and no salsa (the sweet, Asian-style salad dressing was the “salsa”). We had encountered this take on vegetarian nachos earlier in our trip, at the Bealey Hotel; and thought it might be an aberration. But no, it’s not an aberration; it’s what New Zealanders think is a nacho. The dish should have been listed on the menu as a sweet vegetable salad on a bed of corn chips.
The staff at Cider House Cafe was nice and the restaurant had wireless internet access, but the food was poor. We would not stop here again.