NZ Trip - Skyline Restaurant

Skyline Gondola Restaurant and Luge
Brecon St, Queenstown



Queenstown was the last major city that we stopped at during my recent trip to New Zealand. My mum organized a ride up the gondola to the Skyline restaurant for a buffet dinner.



I'll start by mentioning that the view was spectacular. We hung out on the top floor and snapped many photos. After working up an appetite, we headed to the restaurant.



I'm getting a bit tired of blogging buffets because all I can really do is upload photos of my plates...


It's a large restaurant with many tables. We were lucky enough to score a table by the window.


There was such a huge selection of food that I was a bit of a stunned mullet trying to decide what to start with.

Plate 1

I went towards seafood first. Cooked salmon doesn't normally do it for me but this one, smoked in manuka honey, was really lovely.

Plate 2

Next for me was some hot food. There were dishes from all over the world. I got some braised pork belly (Chinese) and lamb rogan josh (Indian). The pork belly was amazing... very tender, and the lamb just melted in the mouth. It had a great slow-cooked quality to it. The roast beef (carved right then and there) was perfectly cooked and my favorite of the veggies was the pumpkin mash. It was sweet and creamy and delicious.

Plate 3

For the plate to follow, I tried some rice salad, pasta, roast pumpkin and coconut fish. This selection was a bit disappointing. The fish was really dry.



I was really excited about the dessert selection and ended up picking a tiny bit of everything.

Assorted dessert plate

My favorites were the creme brulee and the tiramisu. The hockey pockey ice-cream was well-received too.

Creamy vegetable soup and sticky date pudding

My plan was to finish warm on creamy vegetable soup. The soup is excellent - so comforting. I scattered some poppy seed puffs over the top which lent a nice crunch. On the way back, I spotted some sticky date pudding. Even though I had dessert already, sticky date is one of my favorites so I had to try it. So glad I did. It was perfect.

I didn't expect much from Skyline restaurant simply because it's a buffet restaurant in a touristy location. I'm happy to report that the quality of food is good and there's a lot of variety too. Half-way through, there was a maori dance and towards the end, we had a live piano player too. It was an all-round great experience.