Star and Garter: Oamaru’s Oldest Restaurant That’s Full of Wonderful Memories
The Star and Garter Restaurant at Oamaru looked like a really nice, sunny place to have a meal and a cup of coffee. The building looked quite old and there were wooden benches and tables outside where people could sit in the sun and enjoy the food.
I went inside the café and found that it was very bright and welcoming. There were wooden tables and chairs set up for two people or for larger groups. There were big windows on one side and the walls were painted a simple grey and white.
There was a huge fireplace in the middle of one wall. On top of the fireplace, a blackboard had dishes like the soup of the day and the salad of the day drawn on it. I could see the coffee bar at the end of the room. There was a large clock above it which showed me that it was almost eleven in the morning. It was a strange time so there weren’t a lot of people inside the Star and Garter.
What I really loved was the wall full of black and white photographs on one side. It had so many photographs of old couples dressed in their wedding clothes! I looked at all the woman in their white dresses and their veils. There were little captions under each photograph.
When I looked towards the windows, I saw another board of wedding photos. There was a cute statue of a chef standing on the windowsill and a small toy dog. The café looked very homely. I had read that the Star and Garter was Oamaru’s oldest restaurant and it looked like the café would serve family style meals.
Right at the entrance, there was a menu that showed the kinds of breakfast that they served (You can also read my post about my breakfast experience at Poshtel Oamaru.). There were options like pancakes and eggs benedict and the special Garter breakfast which included bacon, fried eggs, hash browns, sausage and grilled mushrooms.
The sign next to the breakfast menu asked visitors to wait to be seated.
I went right up to the counter. There was a coffee menu hanging above it and I could see that they served all the classic types of coffee like cappuccino, latte and flat white. But there were also tea options like English breakfast or peppermint.
Other options were non-alcoholic beverages like ginger beer (but if you’d like to taste some great local beer here, I suggest you go to the Scotts Brewery). There were bottles on the counter.
The first thing that I ordered was the egg benedict salmon. It was topped by a creamy hollandaise sauce and microgreens and it tasted really good.
I also ordered their special blue cod, which was served with vegetables and a lovely cheese sauce. The cod was very fresh and was fried to perfection.
And there was coffee to finish up my meal. The coffee had a layer of foam on top and it was just what I needed. I could add sugar if I wanted to.
I was sure that the benches outside would be a nice place to sit during a cool summer evening.
Menu of Star & Garter Restaurant
The Star and Garter menu had a lot of options. The seafood chowder, blue cod sliders and calamari salad looked really good. Their mains included lamb shank and beef schnitzel.
There were even fish and chips or mini hotdogs and chips on the kid’s menu. The desserts included homemade cheesecake, ice cream sundaes and sticky date puddings.
The coffee and tea was also quite reasonably priced. And I thought it was great that people could opt for non-dairy milk like soy or coconut or oat milk. I was very glad that I had visited this famous Oamaru restaurant (just like the Panda Restaurant).
