The Pub With No Beer Ltd is a cafe on Hakiaha Street in central Taumarunui — a nod, in its name, to the Slim Dusty song — and it holds a 4.9 rating from 92 Google reviews.
In a small Ruapehu town, the cafe is rarely just a cafe: it doubles as the meeting point for locals and the first stop for travellers heading onto the Forgotten World Highway or down from the Tongariro side. The good ones pour a proper flat white and stock a cabinet of pies, slices and filled rolls made on the premises rather than unwrapped. Regulars judge a country cafe quickly — by the coffee, and by whether the room fills with people who clearly aren't tourists.
In a town most people simply drive through, a Hakiaha Street cafe with reviews like these is reason enough to pull over in Taumarunui.