Botswana butchery and Patagonia

 Botswana butchery is one of my favourite restaurants in Queenstown. Patagonia has some really good ice cream.

Botswana butchery

My whole family loved the steak at Botswana butchery.

This classy, hip restaurant, whatever you describe it, delivers elegance and excellence. The food we devoured was so delicious.

We came here to celebrate my mum's birthday, and my eldest sister had already booked the restaurant one month in advance. We even had our own little private room upstairs!

The backlight when a bit berserk.

Mum, I love you heaps, even though you stalk my blog, quite literally 24/7.

You can see the debris being washed up. Queenstown and many other places in South Island, have been experiencing huge amounts of rainfalls and floods.

It also has a stunning location, near the pier in Queenstown. The restaurant itself looks like a cute house. My dad actually mistook the whole restaurant as a house. "Huh? Isn't this a house?"

Both my parents had French onion soup as starters. They both liked it. They thought it was very rich and had the good consistency for an onion soup. 

Naturally, all members of the family chose to eat steak. I had the Canterbury Angus Eye fillet, chargrilled. The rest of my family had the Wakanui blue grain eye fillet, which is supposed to be more fatty, but richer, and supposedly having a better taste.

The steaks look kind of lonely, without any sauces. I actually really liked it without the sauce. I am so used to getting a sauce on the side, but sometimes, flavours are appreciated on its own. The steak had a bit of a crunchy crust on the outside, but tender and succulent on the inside.

We ordered some sides:

These onion rings were sweet, crisp and golden. Definitely had the crunch factor.

Duck-fat roasted potatoes. Oh, so healthy. Though, I have to say that it wasn't my favourite. I thought it was a little too dry.

Cauliflower with cheese- absolutely dreamy.

For dessert:

We had the affogato with biscotti. It was actually my first affogato! I liked it, although, I'm not an espresso or coffee fan. 

We had the 'Taste of chocolate' which had mousse, some kind of ice cream with raspberries and a lava cake/fondant cake. The chocolate mousse had a really interesting texture, and tasted great as well. The cake, when cracked, just oozed out with chocolate fudge, like any lava cake should.

Patagonia

I've always heard from a lot of people that you have to try the ice cream in New Zealand. Patagonia certainly exceeded my expectations.

 I had it three times on this trip. Once in Arrowtown, and twice in Queenstown, near the pier! In Arrowtown, I had the dark chocolate with macadamia (look at the picture above. It is the one next to the chocolate on the top left corner. I like the fact that it was dark chocolate, which didn't make it too sweet. And the nuts went really well. I only got a single scoop, but it is HUGE. And the first time, I got it with a cone. Afterwards, I felt way too full. So the next time, I got it in a cup.

After jet boating (and where both my dad and my eldest sister did not feel too good after a fast jet boat ride.. We went to jet boat 5 minutes after we had fish and chips for lunch.There were a lot of spins.), I had the berry with mascarpone cheese. I really liked this one, since I love berries.  On the right, you've got the pistachio and fig ice cream that my dad ate. 

The third time I went to Patagonia I had lavender hot chocolate that I shared with my sister. I also bought some chocolates from there. I would have to say, I had the best hot chocolate. It was thick, frothy, not too sweet and with a hint of lavender. I'm usually not a hot-chocolate kind of person. I've always found it a little too sweet for my liking and I only can have a tad bit.