“It’s the details that count” I find myself saying to Mr NQN. We’re at our second destination on our New Zealand holiday and staying at the Otahuna Lodge, a 5 star luxury resort just 30 minutes out of Christchurch. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of New Zealand Lodges, grab a cup of tea or coffee and settle in. Lodges in New Zealand are heavenly places and this is a place I find myself nodding and clucking with approval at a lot. You see I could be called a pedant when it comes to hotels but a nicer way to describe me is as “detail oriented” and the thing I love the most about places is the little details (and it’s what I find distinguishes 4 star places from 5 star). When we pull up behind another car of visitors, each party of guests in this seven suite hotel is greeted by one of the owners. Co-owner Miles greets us with Jimmy the chef and our bags magically disappear to our room and we are taken on a short tour of the Queen Anne style building.
Formerly a house built in 1895 for Sir Heaton Rhodes it’s had a rich and varied history and among the numerous owners, it also served as a commune where six families lived until it was recently purchased by owners Miles Refo and Hall Cannon. Miles shows us the library where guests can enjoy their dinner (or you can dine in the sunken wine cellar or turret room).
Bedroom
Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major is playing on the Bose system when we walk into our room (the Verandah Suite) and I’m so delighted and smile (although I doubt the details went so far as to researching the music that I walked down the aisle to 
). It’s huge, at 1000 square feet and there are two fireplaces, one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom.
Bedroom fireplace
Bathroom
Next to the bed there is a glass canister of fresh brownies (delicious with a crunchy top and soft inner), a king sized bed, a compendium is full of nice thick paper and envelopes, a lovely weighty proper pen, Penhaligon’s toiletries, a choice of wooden hangers and satin hangers, complimentary laundering, one switch dimmer lights (I did warn you that I was into details). Through the door is the bathroom which is huge – the first thing I think of is Oprah’s bathroom. There is a refreshment fridge outside the room which includes house-made biscotti, teas, coffee, muesli bars and chocolates.
The Verandah lounge
It opens out onto a thirty foot long white sun drenched terrace with views to the Canterbury Plains. This room hosted HRH Duke of York who later became King George VI. And did I mention the food? The tariff of $1000 a person a night includes a wine matched 5 course degustation dinner, canapes, cocktails and breakfast.
Pool
Part of the sprawling grounds
Otahuna Lodge opens its gates for one weekend ever year during September so that people can view the daffodils in a springtime show, a tradition that was set by Sir Heaton Rhodes. After the tour of the grounds Miles offers us a refreshment drink which we take on the verandah which we have the exclusive use of for our stay. Most guests he says do not use a key but he asks us if we’d like one.
Wine cellar
Once settled in, we take a walk in the gardens and chef Jimmy tells us about our dinner. Tonight they will be serving beef from one of their own cows. It produced 230kg of meat which they use in steaks and in bresaola and other smallgoods. He shows us the sunken cellar room where some of the bresaola is being hung. They also have pigs which are used in prosciutto and coppa (which we will also try tonight) as well as sheep and lamb.
Hazelnuts
Greenhouse
The 30 acre gardens are extensive and are a legacy of Sir Heaton Rhodes as well as new plantings by Refo and Cannon.There are mushrooms, melon, cucumber, kaffir limes, chillies, heirloom tomatoes (Green Zebra, Tommy Toe), stone fruit, mullberries, raspberries, rhubarb, celeriac, horseradish, Jerusalem artichoke, kale, herbs, white and red currants and hazelnuts to name just some.
Tomato vines
Cabbages
Diners can join him when he picks the vegetables for the dinner that night. In the kitchen are some of the chutneys and jams that are made using the garden produce. Interestingly, most of the food that is served for dinner was picked that day with some items picked merely a couple of hours before they are served. Eggs come from the eleven hens on the property and are retrieved fresh every morning.
We go inside where we meet other guests and have some drinks and canapes. On offer tonight are a prawn canape with home made sweet chilli sauce and a rockmelon and prosciutto canape with rockmelon from the garden and house cured prosciutto from one of their pigs.
The Dining Room
Salmon ceviche served with Pegasus Bay Riseling 2008 Canterbury
The Salmon Ceviche is cooked in orange, lemon and lime juice and is flavoured with pickled ginger, parsley, basil and coriander. There are also little capers, currants and almonds and a herb oil. It’s actually a harmonious mix despite how many flavours are involved with the predominant ones being the citrus and the almonds adding texture and the currants sweetness.
Otahuna Coppa with Squash Blossom and Tomato Salad served with a Huia rose 2009, Marlborough
The coppa made from one of their pigs is made with red wine and spices including star anise for 10 days and then is air dried for another 10 days. It’s paired with squash blossom and raw zucchini with a vanilla oil and 12 year old balsamic drops. The vanilla makes this too sweet for me and it tastes more dessert like although Mr NQN gets less vanilla on his.
Otahuna Ribeye of Beef with Corned Beef Hash and Autumn Vegetables served with Alpha Domus The Navigator, 2004 Hawke’s Bay
The aroma of this is so very tempting – it’s a fillet of grass fed rib eye steak with a corned beef hash and kale and cumin roasted carrots and beans. The beef is gorgeous with that distinctively wonderful grass fed flavour and combines well with the corned beef hash while the cumin on the vegetables is very light.
Richmond Red Sheep Milk’s Cheese served with clearview Sea Red 2009, Hawkes Bay
I adore this semi hard sheeps milk cheese and it is paired with thin wafers and an light and wobbly apple and rosemary jelly.
Pear and Frangupani Tart with Apple Sorbet served with Vinoptima Ormond Gewurtztraminer 2004, Gisborne
Absolutely super fresh, the pears from this frangipane tart were picked this afternoon from the huge pear tree on the property and the frangipane is a hazelnut frangipane made from hand shelled hazelnuts picked this afternoon. It’s buttery and delicious and contrasts with the icily tart granny smith sorbet which rests on a sour cream round.
After dinner we take a peek into a fellow guests’ room and then retire to our suite. Our laundry has been collected, plush sheepskin rugs are placed by each side of the bed, a gorgeous boozy liquid centered chocolate and a jug of water and glass sit on the bedside table and there’s a collection of fantastic books on the bedside table. Like I said, there’s nothing quite like a New Zealand lodge.
The thing about staying outside of the city is the beautiful silence in the mornings when you wake up. And at 6am when all you want to do is listen some more to the delicious silence, an alarm pierces your reverie and all you can think is “Noooo”. However motivating us to get up was the fact that we had a fantastic breakfast waiting downstairs.
Bacon and poached eggs with field mushroom
We go downstairs and Melinda greets us sunnily. She offers us a freshly brewed coffee and two types of juice: carrot or orange with ginger or any combination of these and the breakfast chef Adrian offers to make eggs whatever way I’d like using their farm fresh eggs (except for eggs benedict 
). I have bacon and poached eggs with a large field mushroom while Mr NQN has fruit salad, yogurt and muesli. The eggs are perfectly cooked with a lovely runny yolk and crispy bacon (something we find is that bacon in New Zealand is round and not in strips) and the field mushrooms is seasoned and topped with parsley. Refreshed and rested we are ready to set off on the next leg of our magical New Zealand trip!
Mr NQN’s fruit salad and yogurt
Freshly baked peach muffins
And where are we off next on this very early day? Stay tuned Dear Reader!
Do tell me Dear Reader, if you could grow any fruit, vegetable or nut, what would you grow?
NQN and Mr NQN stayed at Otahuna Lodge as a guest of Tourism New Zealand.
Otahuna Lodge
224 Rhodes Road – Tai Tapu, Christchurch 7672, New Zealand
Tel: +64 (03) 329 6333
www.otahuna.co.nz
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58 Comments | Add your own
Wow that bathroom is MASSIVE! Looks so beautiful
And the food – that breakfast! I’m going to NZ in September so maybe I can harass the bf into staying at this place even though he’s got plenty of rellos in CHCH. 
Oh wow, what a beautiful holiday!
It is different when you stay outside the city – the peace and the genuine feeling of escape!
Have a great weekend!
SSG xxx
I’d like visiting NZ and more this place with all this history behind and these awesome foods, yum yum!
My fruit: strawberry, of course
Cheers,
Gera
It’s so elegant. I would break something.
oh my, oh my. OH MY. That is just ultimate isn’t it? At first glance it reminds me of the movie ‘Heavenly Creatures’ a step back in NZ’s time, but as it goes on then I’m wowed, and wowed, and wowed. I love the details too – I love that they serve breakfast on cornish ware. That place would just be bliss for me, and I think A and would just be in heaven to ‘get away from it all’ (including our kids) and feel really well looked after.
Fantastic post!!!
wow looks amazing Lorraine! The ceviche looks so fresh and the bathroom was beautiful.
That trip sounds absolutely amazing. I am so jealous. And Pachelbel’s Canon in D Minor is simply a flawless song in my opinion.
A beautiful place and some amazing food there.
WOW
I have NEVER been to New Zealand….although my best friend and I are particularly keen to do a wine tour around Marlborough 
One word. WOW!
I feel more peaceful just reading about it. Husband and I have just started an attempt at growing raspberries. Fingers crossed!
Wow, I love how you described the place and the food. I feel like I just had a mini-holiday
That place looks gorgeous!
I love that all the produce is from right there!
You must’ve felt like you were in another world!
Much better than being at work on this rainy Friday!
Amazing! Everything looks so plush and welcoming. I’m not sure our budget would stretch to staying there, but having the ‘open garden’ each year is a great idea. Mangoes would be my fruit of choice to grow. Mmmmm….mangoes….We had Pachabel’s Canon in D Major for our wedding too!(c.1994) We smile everytime we hear it as well. <3
Gorgeous lodge and a gorgeous part of the country.
OH SO MAGICAL!!!
the lodge looks beautiful – very restful & romantic!
it would have to be figs (all time favourite fruit) and hazelnuts!
What an absolutely glorious looking building!
We are making our very first trip to NZ in June – I can’t wait!
Nqn I am reading this from my mobile and it’s fabulous and I love it! Great job by you and mr Nqn. Now it will be so easy to read Nqn on the bus I may well miss my stop
Gosh this place is only 20 minutes from my house.
It looks gorgeous!
but
at $1000 a night I wont be going anytime soon :”(
You have done Otahuna proud, what a grand overview!
Thank you!
I really don’t think there’s much to say about this except *swoon*. And sadness that I doubt I’ll ever stay in anywhere that fancy in my lifetime (oh, post-graduation-pre-career ennui…)
I can’t decide between figs, raspberries, lychees, and fuyu persimmons as what I’d like to grow…
Let’s be honest. I have a German Shepherd puppy that is going through his digging stage – this means that my once beautiful garden now looks like a scene out of “The Pacific” – I would love to be able to grow ANYTHING!! But in a perfect world – I would love to grow heirloom tomatoes… they are so gorgeous in all their weird bulbous shapes and multicolours… would love to do that… one day
Spectacular! What an amazing place to stay, I can’t decide which I love most – the bathroom or the breakfast/kitchen area!
Pomegranates are next on my must get list for fruit trees.
And I’m another Pachabel’s
Canon bride too, it seems there’s a few of us about
Yes Dahrling… simply gorgeous! But the $1000 per person per night tariff tells you that it absolutely MUST be.
All the photos are wonderful and the place is just gorgeous… But the nuts in the photo are HZELNUTS, not chestnuts – wrong tree, I am sorry to say… I come from Eastern Europe where both these grow everywhere. The leaves are very different and so are the nuts… But the rest is great!
good luck.
regular reader, who still wonders which entry won the Baci chocolates…
I’m thinking of a winter stay after agreeing to a skiing holiday! I’m not one for cold but this place warms the cockles! Love NZ, enjoy the rest of your hol.
Wow! That place looks and sounds amazing. From the food to the rooms and all the fine little details (especially the brownies and house-made bisoctti. Sigh, if only the lodge also had a full time nanny.
Enjoy the rest of NZ. Absolutely one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Oh, if you like Mexican, there’s a great Mexican restaurant in Christchurch, of course I can’t remember the name, but it’s upstairs (up a lot of stairs).
I am jealous… I want to visit now…
I have an award for you over on my blog, A Dash Of Flavour (www.adashofflavour.blogspot.com). I hope you will come and pick it up.
You had me at brownies by the bed. The pear and frangipane tart looks pretty tempting too. I need to stay here now.
You’re right, it’s the details that count, and I could so get used to living like this! But, reality sticks its big nose in and I’m back at my desk at work. Thanks for the lovely daydream
Pedants rule ok! ;P And that bath…Oh.
What a heavenly place, beautiful gardens and the freshest produce, straight from the garden, Bonus! Three cheers to the Otahuna Lodge for attention to detail, it really makes you feel that you’re a VIP. I’d love some of that yummy dessert ,right now!
Last year, we stayed at The Tower in the Hunter Valley ,excellent service and food , the suites are all distinct and very spacious.
That place looks so elegant and relaxing.
I tried growing lychees – till the trees grew too big for our teeny-tiny garden.
Fennel and Artichokes are very difficult to grow for the home gardener but delicious to eat!
I am so jealous that just looks amazing.
For me if I could grow fruit it would be these amazing large mandarins from my childhood. A friend had a tree at their house and the skin was loose and easy to peel off and they were large and juicy and we use to sit and eat them all day.
*swoon*
5 star. You a speaking my language.
We have just come back from a cruise to NZ the second trip the first we drove and stayed in lodges as you did, and I would never do it any other way, as for the fruit Raspberries are at their best grown in NZ, Hmmm,I would love to be able to grown them as they do.
I’ve been waiting for this since you mentioned it on Facebook. I can understand your enthusiasm!
cool bathtub. ya don’t see many of those these days!
This place is awesome Lorraine…and that food has made me hungry…and I’ve already had dinner LOL!!!
What a stunning place, you live well daaaahling
. Was drooling a little at the bread selection pic. I’m such a carb girl.
Have a wonderful weekend.
*kisses* HH
I wanna go there!!!!!!
that looks amazing! i want to be there right now.
This place looks so peaceful and beautiful! Big bathrooms look lovely, but I wouldn’t want one in my own home. It would feel too cold too quickly in that tub ; )
STUNNING!!!!!
This place looks gorgeous. All the rooms are so airy and beautifully decorated. The food looks great too
Wow, this looks amazing. My husband and I used to love indulging like this every so often, before we had our darling babies. For the moment I have to live vicariously through other people’s experiences of such indulgence and reading your post was truly a delight, I felt as though I was there with you!
what an amazing place in NZ. hope to visit someday!!
loving the bath room also the delicious breakfast! ehhehe
One of my favorite authors, Agatha Christie, after a trip to New Zealand (she travelled the world over) said that it was the most beautiful country ever. I can see why.
I’m in to all the details too, and these details were beautiful. Oh! to have a week being pampered there. Sitting on that terrace, walking those interesting paths and eating that beautiful food. Yum
My favorite fruit happens to be whatever is in season at the time.
Looks amazing. Lovely post.
This place looks heavenly. Love the scenery but also that bath has me sighing – magnificent!
The food looks fantastic too – especially the salmon ceviche & your breakfast. Yum!
Can’t wait to see the next leg of your journey!
Lorraine I’m holding you personally responsible for making every single hotel/B&B/tent I ever stay in look crap compared to what you’ve shown us. Am now trying to forget everything I’ve just looked at.
Wow amazing!! love the details
This is opulently relaxing! Love how they grow/rear the bulk of their ingredients and, like you, I definitely appreciate the details. The beautiful shade of the Granny Smith apple sorbet has me completely captured.
Hi Esz-Isn’t it fab? I’d love one that big! hehe one night here won’t hurt will it?
Hi SSG-It was!
I agree, it’s so peaceful and lovely! You too! 
xxx
Hi Gera-Ahh good choice!
Hi Blond Duck-hehe if I didn’t, you won’t!
Hi Liss-Isn’t it just! Yes so many thoughtful touches which satisfies a pedant like me
I think that the girls would just love the garden! Thankyou! 
Hi gastronomy gal-thanks! It was so amazing
Hi Deanna-It was heaven on earth really and I agree about Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major!
Hi Cakelaw-yes on both counts!
Hi Lisa-Sounds like an excellent idea!
Hi Farrah-haha!
Hi Shan-Oh best of luck with the raspberries and I feel the same just rereading it and recalling all the memories
Hi Nic-Oh fabulous! I’m so glad!
Hi elise-Yes isn’t that wonderful? I did feel like it (and I didn’t want to leave hehe
)
Hi Fiona-I know, it was wonderful! Hubby would love mangoes too
Oh wonderful! I’m glad you know what I mean! 
Hi Barbara-Indeed!
Hi Rebecca-Absolutely!
Hi Chrystalla-I know, perfect for a honeymoon! Oh yes figs for me too!
Hi Amanda-Oh you;re going to have a ball! How wonderful!
Hi Alex-Oh how fabulous! I’m so glad that you like it -I hope you don’t miss the stop too!
Hi Fiona-No way!
How fantastic for you 
Thankyou so much!
Hi Hannah-hehe I know, isn’t it worth a swoon or a faint! Oh no you will one day!
All very nice choices!
Hi Joy-Oh yes heirlooms are a bit of an obsession of mine too!
Hi Red Dirt Mummy-I know, so much to choose from
I think there are quite a few of us! 
Hi retired foodie-yes and it’s worth every cent!
Hi kiska-Thanks very much and thanks for the note about the hazelnuts! The Baci competition only finished last night!
Hi Vanessa-Absolutely sterling idea!
Thankyou!
Hi Naomi-I know, I love the little details
If anyone could arrange one, it’s a lodge! 
Thankyou! sadly we were only in CC one night!
Hi Jo-Thankyou so much Jo! That’s so sweet of you
Hi MissDissent-hehe I know, how cool is that?
Absolutely!
Hi Belle-I know, the only problem is having to leave! Hehe you’re welcome!
Hi Sasa-haha thankyou!
Hi Matilda-I know! Isn’t it lovely and feeling like a VIP is rather spectacular isn’t it! Oh fantastic, will keep that in mind!
Hi Midge-Thanks, it was!
Oh no, really? What a shame!
Hi Matilda-hehe very true!
Hi Saphire-Oh yes the ones that are easy to peel and sweet-lovely!
Hi Kelley-Absolutely!
Hi Novak-Sounds fabulous! yes the raspberries are just wonderful there aren’t they!
Hi Amy-Hehe thankyou so much!
Hi grace-I know, it was huuuuge!
Hi Dzintra-It was great. Hehe oh no!
Hi Heavenly Housewife-Thankyou darling! I hope you have a fabulous one too! xxx
Hi Reemski-You should!
Hi Kylie-hehe I would love to be back there!
Hi Brenda-Hehe call me crazy but I think I could live with that!
Hi clara-Agreed!
Hi Mark-Yes it was so well appointed!
Hi Mary-Aww thankyou so much! What a wonderful thing to say!
Hi nora-Absolutely, it’s worth a visit!
Hi Joumana-I can believe that, it’s amazingly gorgeous there
Hi Shirley-I’m glad you understand the details thing too!
Thankyou!
Hi Phunk-Thanks! I hope that you like it. We had a most magnificent time!
Hi Conor-Hehe sorry!
Hi Syl-Me too! :p
Hi mlle délicieuse-absolutely! Isn’t it amazing how committed they are?
this is a lovely place to be.—
looking for a time to visit from nigeria.
doyin
What a dreamy looking place, especially with that fireplace right near the big tub. And how fun to eat in the kitchen like that. Just shows the best seat in the house is often the one where all the action is.
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