Ground floor · the river side

Dining

Name: The Norwester Room
Address: 142 Cambridge Terrace, Christchurch, Canterbury, 8011, NZ
Telephone: +64 3 371 4912
Price range: NZ$$$

The Norwester Room seats eighty-two along the water. The Bealey Bar is behind it and stays open later. The Cellar Table takes twelve, downstairs, by arrangement.

The Norwester Room at Wintercape, tables laid along the river windows

Covers: 82
Breakfast: From 6.30am
Dinner: 5.30 – 9.30pm
Bar until: 1.00am
Wines listed: 310
Bookings: +64 3 371 4912

01 The Norwester Room

Dinner, nightly

Named after the wind, which is not a compliment.

The nor'wester comes down off the Alps, crosses eighty kilometres of plains, arrives dry and hot and puts the entire province in a bad mood for two days. Canterbury people talk about it the way other places talk about a difficult relative. Naming the restaurant after it seemed more honest than naming it after the river.

Eighty-two covers in a single room along the north elevation, with the willows outside the glass and the tram going past until six. The tables are Southland beech, the chairs were made in Ōtautahi by a workshop four streets away, and the room was designed so that a table of two is never seated in the middle of it.

Head chef Rūaumoko Whately has run this kitchen since 2019 and rewrites the menu every Wednesday afternoon. There are usually six starters, seven mains and four puddings, which is a short list by intent — everything on it is cooked properly rather than a lot of things being cooked adequately.

If the card in your room is a day out of date, that is why. Ask for the current one; it will be different and it will be better.

A plated dish of Canterbury lamb in the Norwester Room

Canterbury produce

Most of it comes from inside the province.

Lamb from the Ashburton lakes country, hogget and merino off the high-country stations behind Methven, salmon farmed at Akaroa on the peninsula, and blue cod landed at Kaikōura when the boats get out, which in a southerly they do not. Whitebait on the Coast runs from September to mid-November and we buy what we can get, which is never much and never cheap.

Vegetables come up from Southbridge and Leeston, forty minutes south on the flat. Stone fruit arrives from Central Otago for about six weeks from mid-January. Bluff oysters from March while the season holds. Cheese from Barrys Bay on the road to Akaroa, made in a shed you can visit.

Breakfast is served here from half past six, and it is the good kind: eggs cooked to order by a person, not held in a tray under a light. Guests pay NZ$36; anyone off the street is welcome at the same price if there is a table.

BreakfastDaily, 6.30am – 10.30am · NZ$36
LunchThu – Sun, 12.00pm – 2.30pm
DinnerNightly, 5.30pm – 9.30pm
Menu changesEvery Wednesday afternoon
Closed25 December and Good Friday
Bookings+64 3 371 4912

02 The Bealey Bar

The counter of the Bealey Bar in the evening

Until 1am, seven nights

Forty seats, one long counter, and no television.

Named for Arthur Dobson's route over the pass and the river that runs beside it, not for the man. The bar is one room behind the restaurant with its own door onto Cambridge Terrace, so you can come in for a drink without walking through anyone's dinner.

The list runs to 310 wines and it leans hard on this island: Waipara riesling and pinot gris from fifty minutes north, Waitaki pinot noir, Marlborough for the obvious reasons, and about forty by the glass on a Coravin so that a good bottle is not held hostage by one order. There are 46 New Zealand gins, which is more than anyone needs and fewer than exist.

Cocktails are short and mostly classical. There is a bar snack menu until midnight, and the kitchen will do a proper plate of something until half past ten if you ask nicely and the pass is still open.

OpenDaily, 11.00am – 1.00am
Seats40, plus 14 at the counter
Wine list310 labels · 40 by the glass
New Zealand gin46
Bar snacksUntil midnight
Live musicThursday, a trio, 8pm — quietly

A glass on the timber counter of the Bealey Bar

The counter, 14 seats

Bottles racked in the cellar below the Bealey Bar

310 labels, downstairs

03 Two smaller rooms

01 / Private dining

The Cellar Table

Twelve seats at one table in the wine cellar below the bar, under a barrel-vaulted ceiling that is the only genuinely old thing in the building — it was under the previous building too, and it was the only part that survived. Set menu, agreed with the kitchen a week ahead. NZ$145 a head, wine extra.

Book the Cellar Table

02 / Mornings

Breakfast

From half past six, seven days, in the Norwester Room. A short buffet for the people catching flights and a full cooked menu for the people who are not. Coffee is roasted in Woolston, eight minutes east, and the plunger in your room is the same bean.

03 / In your room

Room service

From half past six in the morning until eleven at night, with a short list — soup, a sandwich, eggs, a bowl of something hot — running through until two. If you come in off a delayed flight at one in the morning, there is food, and there is somebody awake to bring it.

Dietary requirements, allergies and the honest answer

Tell us when you book and the kitchen will cook for it properly rather than removing things from a plate. We handle gluten, dairy, nut and shellfish requirements every service. What we will not do is promise a nut-free kitchen — it is not one, we cannot make it one for a single service, and a guest with a serious allergy deserves to be told that plainly rather than reassured and then endangered.

04 Booking a table

Walk-ins

The counter at the Bealey Bar is never booked and there are fourteen seats at it. On a Tuesday you will get one. On a Friday after seven you will not, and we would rather say so here than at the door.

Telephone, or send the form, and a person answers.

The Norwester Room takes bookings from 5.30pm, in half-hour slots, up to three months ahead. Friday and Saturday go about a fortnight out; a Sunday or a Monday you can usually have on the day. Cup Week in November and the fortnight before Christmas are the exceptions and they book solid by September.

Guests staying in the hotel get first call on tables until 4pm on the day, which is worth knowing if you are deciding whether to book dinner before you book the room. Hotel guests can also charge dinner to the room, which nobody ever regrets at the time.

Telephone +64 3 371 4912 Send an enquiry