Beached Whale Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in South Island

Maybe the worst restaurant I've ever been to.

$25 roughly for a pizza. The meat lovers was average; there was too much sauce on it and the "caramelized onions" were barely translucent and not even close to being caramelized. And being charged $25, i expected some fresh or homemade elements to accompany the pizza, but none were present.

The chicken and pesto pizza was far and away the worst pizza I've ever bought. the chicken was packaged(not homemade) and was absolutely tasteless. The base sauce was watery and had no flavor(presumably just packaged sauce). The only thing you could taste was the pesto, which there were only about 6 pathetic dabs of on the entire pizza. And of course, the fabled "caramelized onions" were included in the pizza which did absolutely nothing.

The fries were the same as you would get from any other corner fish & chip shop. except instead of $4 for a scoop, they charge you $11 for a bowl...

And as if things couldn't get any worse, i was hit with the Coup de grâce: the chocolate cake.

Based on the food we had received by that time, my expectations were low. But nothing prepared me for a roughly 5 cm squared piece of presumably frozen chocolate brownie, which was dense, tacky, tasteless and almost inedible. The thing costed $16 and was literally 5 mouthfuls. That is, 5 mouthfuls of utter garbage.

I think whats going on is that the owners think they can get away with putting 0 effort into their food and overcharging their customers because they know there is no other place in Kaiteriteri open past 6 or 7pm, and so the customers will dine there regardless of how terrible the food may be.

To all of those reading, please, if you value your money, take the 15 minute drive to Motueka and save yourselves from this absolute joke of...

Bad experience all around, should’ve listened to the poor reviews - this place is a roll of the dice at best, I’d steer clear unless you’re patient and want to try your luck. Stopped by and told they’d have live music the next night so made a reservation. Showed up, no live music. Strike 1 but not the end of the world. Placed our order & 45 min later after seeing several tables that got served in ~20min we asked if they could check on our order(a pizza and a fish & chips). We were told just a few more minutes. After an hour and ten minutes checked again - this time they decided they lost the order and we’re told they’ll bring it out quickly and offer a free dessert to make up for it. Food did come out and was average. Ordered a scoop of ice cream for dessert - by now it’s not busy and the staff is chatting in the kitchen. 10 min later we ask where the ice cream is and are told they forgot and will get right to it. After 15 min we give up and let the manager(or owner) know we’re really disappointed that both dinner and the dessert to make up for it were late and required us to leave the table and check multiple times. Rather than an apology or even checking with his staff to find out what happened, he asks why we waited over an hour to check on our dinner(we actually had asked twice and shouldn’t have to ask once) and then goes on to say it was only 15 min and checking twice again for a scoop of ice cream so he doesn’t understand what’s wrong. That really said it all - no interest in providing good service, understanding what didn’t work with his team, or making the experience better for the customer. One of his staff at least stepped in to tell him they screwed up and lost the order(and forgot about...

We were sat inside which was a bit tavern-ish for my liking. I think the outside tables looked much nicer. The medium-rare steak we ordered was surprisingly cooked exactly as we ordered and was quite tasty aside from a lot of gristly bits. The veges accompanying the steak were quite underdone which was alright for the zucchini and asparagus but not very pleasant for the beans and carrots as they were too crunchy to eat with a mouthful of steak. The real letdown on the steak meal was the “potato rosti” which was one of those frozen oven baked things from a packet. I would highly recommend changing it to mash or even chips as it has no flavour and tastes like sawdust. My partner got the the pork ribs which were tasty and came with wedges and coleslaw which were both alright but not impressive. We were very impressed with the local ciders on offer - left branch cider I think it was called. Highly recommend those as they are packed with natural flavour. I would go back but try to...