Ipa

At mid day today, Ruth and I met with members of the I P A for our mid year luncheon. The venue was Hintons, at the top of Wairrakei Road, just before Russley Road. This picture was taken at our table. This was the table that Ruth and I sat at. Ruth is out of view (on the other side of the table to the people shown). I of course, was taking the picture. We were looking forward to the event. Just before we left to attend, I received a Text from Garry H. that Lesley was ill and they could not attend. I put in their apologies. I was a pleasure to meet up with every one and we enjoyed the chit chat. When we had organised the luncheon, we had looked at two or three other venues and we had decided on this location, mainly I think, as not many of us had been there before, whereas, at the other venues discussed, most of us had been to several times. As usual, the I P A contributed to each member and partners dinner. I will now give my (and Ruth's View) of Hintons. We would definately not go again. The meal was as follows. Two dishes - one with cold potatoe salad. I like this dish but here it was not very appetizing. Another salad dish, with Kumara Salad. It was not too bad but cold. The meat dish was thick slices of roast beef. It was cooked around the edges but raw inside. There was about 1 cm around the edges cooked, the remainder was virtually raw and bleeding. I am familiar with "rare" but this was raw. The remaining dish was chicken. I do not normally eat chicken when out, but on this occasion, as there was nothing else appetizing, I ate a piece. It was actually quite nice. There was a dish of "lasagne". I do not normally eat this dish. Everything was "help yourself" so I took a small portion. The long stringy pieces were very thick. The cheese on top - probably parmessan, was hard and dry. The entire meal was poor, not enjoyable and very overpriced. The dessert was slices of cheesecake and a bowl of what appeared to be whipped cream. It was not whipped cream, but that horrible stuff which has an additive, usually icing sugar. I hate it. I was not the only person who had to cut the cheesecake base with a knife. It reminded me of a dish I had recently at a private home - the base being made of mashed up biscuits. It was very enjoyable. The total cost of the meals for Ruth and I was $90.00. We had a glass of wine each. That was $37.00 each for a very unenjoyable meal. For that sort of money, I expect quite a lot. In the last few months, I have had meals at Rossendale, Fleurs at Moeraki and the Cotswold. I may have paid a little more at some of these, but at each, the quality and quantity of food was superb. There were no hot plates for food to be served on. Tea and coffee was available - tea bags only - and no herbal tea - and not offered when I asked for it. I enjoyed meeting everyone - talking to them and looking at the large picture - block mounted on the wall. At first, I thought it was the Waimakariri. Carol was sure that it was. I studied it closely and realised that it was not. The geography was wrong. There was an inland damn with a town at the base. I concluded it was Alexandra and it turned out I was right. Would I go to Hintons again - No. My advice to anyone - spend a little more perhaps - and go to Rossendale or Larcombs. I will put some more pictures of this event here later - Not tonight - I took them at high res and they will have to be "squeezed". Doing bulk image resizing is something I have not achieved on Linux yet so each picture will have to be done manually.