Pizza so good, we ate here 2 days in a row.
Turangi Tavern was recommended to us by our airBnB host and is the #2 restaurant in Turangi on TripAdvisor. It's a huge place with bar, indoor, and outdoor seating, an arcade room, pool table, and 3 TVs inside showing sports and horse and dog racing. Order at the counter and find an open seat. FYI, there's probably someone sitting outside smoking, so choose your seating accordingly.
Their summer menu features $13 pizzas, about 8" in length, with toppings ranging from smoked salmon to venison. Both nights, my boyfriend enjoyed their smoked salmon pizza with capers, cream cheese, red onions, and pesto. It's like eating a warm lox bagel with generous amount of smoked salmon and rivets of pesto running through the cream cheese. Also, the baking mellows out the acidity from the capers, making this pizza all the more enjoyable. Highly recommend this pizza!
The first night, I tried their apricot chicken pizza with chicken, capsicum (peppers), mushroom, camembert cheese, and apricot sauce. The chicken is tender (my guess is that it's chicken thigh meat), and the apricot jam and cheese go well together. Actually, the sweet and tangy tones of the apricot sauce really reminded me of KFC's sweet & sour sauce (yup, that translucent red sauce with bits of pepper dispersed throughout). This is definitely a sweet & savory pizza, so order something else if you're looking to solely fulfill savory needs.
The second night, I opted for their venison pizza with red onions, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, aioli, and fresh rocket (arugula). Not a fan of arugula, so I picked all of those off. However, the venison is cooked well, a bit tough as expected but also juicy. The aioli works well with the venison and tomatoes. A solid choice if you deer to try it ;)
Since we were starving after the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, my boyfriend also ordered the $8 bar snack of spring rolls and samosas with soy sauce and sweet chili sauce. 'tis a strange combo, and a bit disappointing. The spring rolls were small and only filled with cabbage and glass noodles, and the curry filling inside the samosas was very salty. Wouldn't recommend.
Despite their seemingly petite size, these pizzas proved quite filling both nights and didn't break our wallets, which is impressive considering the normal price of meals in New Zealand. Highly highly recommend stopping by Turangi Tavern! read more