Puhoi Pub

We’ve adopted the little coastal town of Tutukaka as our go-to weekend getaway spot. It’s beautiful, we have friends with holiday homes there, and it’s far enough away to feel like you’re going somewhere but not so far as to be a big hassle. Ticks all the boxes.

We’ve seen some of the things you can see between here and there, but we’d never stopped in historic Puhoi until this past weekend.

Puhoi as we know it today was founded about 150 years ago by Bohemians. Then commercial logging happened for a long time, and now it’s an exurban off-ramp as you head north from Auckland.

The main attraction is the pub, which offers good road food and also beer. And takes the whole “put stuff on the wall” school of interior design to an extreme. Especially banknotes from faraway places scrawled with I was here messages. Even at the early end of lunchtime on a Friday there were 20-30 people mostly sitting outside enjoying the day.

A fun place to have lunch, but we’re still holding out hope for the Kumeu Pie Shop to reopen.