Clocktower Cafe Hokitika — Restaurant in West Coast

I was on another pie reviewing mission ans I travel throughout NZ and I specifically drove to Hokitika to come to the Clocktower cafe because someone recommended it to me saying that had great pies.

These are good quality pies, however they’re not the best pies I’ve ever had. The pies certainly are the authentic NZ homemade style pie, but with fairly generic flavours and small selection of flavours.

With that said, I chose a steak and blue cheese, because it was the most unique pie flavour option. The pastry was perfect. I felt they had the pastry of the pie on point. It couldn’t be better. The steak inside the pie was slight dry, but not to an unbearable extent. The ratio of steak to gravy was perfect, the pie wasn’t too sloppy, and the gravy enhanced the flavour. The blue cheese was a great contrast of flavour. My only critique with regard to the cheese was that the cheese was only on one side of the pie, so one side of the pie was just the flavour of a steak pie. Thankfully, it was the second half of the pie that had the blue cheese and it was a lovely pop of flavour to end my pie consumption moment.

The cafe itself is quite big, the decor is slightly dated in my opinion, but the cafe is fairly busy so I assume it’s popular with locals. The service from staff seems good. However, I was there when it was busy, so waited at the counter for a while to be served, and then waited quite a long time for my coffee.

Overall I think this is a solid choice for a pie if you’re passing through, but no award...

Terrible customer service. The grumpy lady at the counter told my counterpart that she couldn't bring in her takeaway coffee cup even after we ordered two meals and two sweat lolly cakes. Rude service which is a shame as the other girl working there was so sweet and kind. Will not return, sort out your attitude before you lose customers. Being a kiwi not impressed with this behavior telling my counterpart you have to throw out the takeaway coffee cup because it's a New Zealand thing. Just because we had one coffee cup from a nearby cafe doesn't warrant you telling us to throw it away and we cant consume it at your facility. We ordered $20 worth of food and drink for two! Don't bother coming here it ruined...

Service with a frown and a bad attitude. Ordered a garden salad with fries (I asked for no Aoli which got me a funny look and a suspicious stare) and a cappuccino with rice milk. Eggs Benedict with spinach for the Mrs. The Benedict came with two fat slices of meat and no spinach, when told the waitress accused us of lying (said we said answered yes to Bacon even though she didn't ask us). We told her we have been vegetarian for years, then she stormed off making her grandson bring us the rolled over Benedict with some spinach slid under it. Just to finish it off my cappuccino tasted like it was basically burnt. Nice view of the clocktower out...