Today is officially the first trading day of a stunning new Hotel in downtown Auckland – but I attended an opening night, of sorts, in association with The Landing, last week. Welcome to The Hotel Britomart.
The building is beautifully detailed – an exterior of hand-made bricks, solid, raw wood, and polished concrete. With 99 rooms for guests, a restaurant space on the ground floor, and an airy atrium. I had a tour of the Rangihou Suite – one of three suites on the top floor. Lined with timber and exquisitely designed and decorated, these would be the ultimate pad for a weekend in the city – especially with all of the downtown and waterfront literally on your doorstep.
The restaurant – Kingi – is in the refurbished Masonic House part of the development, and is led by Tom Hishon and Josh Helm (of Orphans Kitchen reknown). It looks like a place where the locals could hang out as much as visiting tourists, and it’s seriously dialling up the style-o-meter. Focussed on fish, but you could just have a glass of the tremendous wines from The Landing with a dish of olives as much as a full sit-down meal.
In the dusk of a Spring afternoon, this was a great place to spend a couple of hours – nibbling on small plates of and drinking The Landing’s two Chardonnays – both from the special 2019 vintage. ‘The Landing’ version is the grown-up version, with more structure, complexity and finesee, but sharing much of its flavour with little sibling ‘The Boathouse Chardonnay’. This one is more forward and fruit-led, but still with a delicate minerality to balance out the richness of brioche and caramel.
Look forward to a much more in-depth report on wines from The Landing following our trip up to the Bay of Islands this coming weekend.
