Winnies, Queenstown, New Zealand

Prior to landing in Queenstown, our group went on a mad hunt to find some good food recommendations. My friend read online that one of the great restaurants we needed to check out was Winnies, a pub-style restaurant known for its pizzas.

Winnies is located on the main shopping strip of ‘The Mall’, on Ballarat Street. The entrance is a door with a staircase leading to a second floor; we made the embarrassing move of walking right past the door and walking into the restaurant next door, sitting down and then realising the menu had a different restaurant name – whoops! When we finally sat down at Winnies, we were quite impressed by the place. They’ve got a great variety of pizzas, cheap drinks and a rustic American style feel. It really felt like we had left New Zealand and stumbled into the regional American countryside.

Tonight we decide on pizzas only for our table to share. They have 3 sizes available, small (pizza for one), medium (28cm) and large (35cm), and we choose the medium which provides 8 slices for NZD$28.95. All pizzas are wood fired and we find a good trait of these pizzas is that the toppings are very close to the edge so there is barely any crust.

Montonara

First up is the Montonara which consists of chicken, sundried tomatoes, brie and spring onions with sweet chilli sauce and pistachio sour cream. The chicken is succulent and goes well with the cheese which ties the whole pizza together. There are sweet undertones all throughout the pizza thanks to the sweet chilli sauce and onions. The sour cream with pistachio flavours adds an extra element to the pizza.

Moroccan Lamb

The Moroccan Lamb is served with zucchini, onion and tomatoes with mint yoghurt dressing. The lamb is very gamey which I like and the mint yoghurt is refreshing, reminding me of the Subway event we attended earlier in the year. The cucumber also adds extra texture to the pizza which is different as I’ve never had cucumber on a pizza before.

Tri Factor

The Tri Factor contains steak cuts, bacon, mushrooms, onions and BBQ sauce. It is pretty much a meat lovers pizza with added mushrooms. The steak cuts are delicious and something I think all meat lovers pizzas should adopt!

Luigis Italian (gluten free)

Our last pizza for the night is Luigis Italian with crispy bacon, pepperoni, mixed capsicums, onions and mushrooms. There is a lot of capsicum and cheese on this along with pepperoni – classic flavours which can do no wrong.

Overall, Winnies is a fantastic place to chill out at Queenstown after spending a tiring day on the snow. They’ve got great pizzas guaranteed to please everyone at good prices as well. Although we only ordered 4 pizzas, they’re deceptively large and filling, so between the 7 of us, we were all stuffed by the end of the night.

Winnies
The Mall, 7 Ballarat Street, Queenstown Town Centre
Ph: 03-442 8635


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