Night at the Museum.. But in the day time

As I am typing this, Grace is reading Mills and Boon. Out loud. 

We have had a very long morning. 


Kate is only working a half day so Grace and I entertained ourselves at the Otago Museum before meeting her for lunch. Now this is entirely non-food related, but the museum's butterfly exhibit is amazing! They are allowed to fly freely within the enclosure so you can touch them and I was deathly scared of accidentally stepping on one. This is a permanent exhibit and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Dunedin.

Monarchs and some other butterflies at the feeding station

 Anyway.. Back to the food. 

Menu at the Museum Cafe

After we sanitised our hands, we met Kate downstairs for lunch at the museum cafe. Again, Grace and I were surprised at the very reasonable prices (especially at a museum). She ordered corn fritters, Kate ordered a smoked chicken panini and I got kumara hashcake with bacon and a bowl of fries to share.

Grace's Corn Fritters ($12)

We found the dishes here to be, overall, quite average. Grace found that the dish came with too much relish which masked the taste of the corn fritters. The fact that the salad wasn't on the side also made it hard to eat -once the fritters crumbled, it was difficult to make out the difference between fritter and salad which was just plain confusing!

Kumara Hashcakes with Bacon ($12)

Unfortunately, my dish wasn't much better. Although perfectly edible, I found it dry, crumbly and, frankly, quite lacking in any flavour. I looked around for the missing relish and settled on putting a lot of ground pepper on my dish. About 2 minutes into my meal, an embarrassed waitress came out carrying a dish of what we thought was salad dressing. It turned out to be maple syrup..

My meal with the addition of maple syrup

I fully appreciate that maple syrup and bacon go together like sunshine and lollipops but when paired with the remaining kumara cakes and salad, it became that awkward cousin you bring to parties because your parents insisted that you show him around -your friends don't really make an effort because he obviously doesn't have the same interests and none of your friends make an effort to talk to him.

Smoked Chicken Panini ($8.50)

Kate's was the only dish that came with the salad on the side which, I'm told, made life a lot easier. No complaints except that it was a little dry and could have used a little more flavour (Ok, so I guess that's a complaint or two..)

Fries with Aoli and Tomato Sauce ($7.70)

The fries were good though =)


Verdict? Quite average. Not too bad for an afternoon lunch -but ask for your salad on the side, not this weird "undersalad" business