Black Dog Bar is a bar at 7 The Lane in Te Anau, Southland, and its 4.8 rating from 348 Google reviews says plenty in a town where locals and visitors drink side by side. A good bar in a gateway town does a few things well: it pours a proper measure, it stays welcoming when the tour buses roll back from Milford Sound, and the staff usually know which tracks are open and how the weather is turning. The counter is often the best seat in the house, because that is where the local knowledge lives — track conditions, road closures, whether it is worth an early start. Regulars arrive early in peak season, since small-town bars fill quickly once the day-trippers are back. On The Lane in Te Anau, Black Dog Bar is the sort of warm, well-earned stop a long Fiordland day ends on.