Bailiez Cafe & Bar is the all-day cafe and bar of the Distinction Luxmore Hotel, set right on Te Anau's Town Centre and recently refurbished. It trades on a simple promise — relaxed cafe ambience and friendly, welcoming service — captured in its motto: “a place where friends meet.”
Though it sits inside a hotel, Bailiez is no guests-only dining room. Its cafe-style menu and bar are popular with Te Anau locals, who treat it as a daily habit: morning coffee, a casual lunch, or drinks and a hearty meal beside the fire at the end of a full day exploring Te Anau and Fiordland.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all served. In summer the cafe opens daily from 9.00am to 9.30pm; in winter breakfast runs from 7am to 10am with lunch and dinner until 8.00pm, though hours may be reduced in the quieter months. Families are well looked after with a great value kids menu, highchairs, activity sheets, pencils and free unlimited WiFi, and Distinction Hotels restaurant gift vouchers are available online.
Step through the doors of the Distinction Luxmore Hotel on Te Anau's Town Centre and you'll find Bailiez Cafe & Bar, the hotel's recently refurbished all-day cafe and bar. The formula is simple — relaxed cafe ambience, friendly, welcoming service — and the motto says the rest: “a place where friends meet.”
Although it sits inside a hotel, Bailiez is not a guests-only dining room. Its cafe-style menu and bar are popular with Te Anau locals, for whom it has become something of a habit: the morning coffee that starts the day, the casual lunch that stretches an hour, the evening wind-down with friends and family beside the fire. The hotel calls the menu legendary, and locals seem to agree.
The refurbishment has freshened the room, but the character is unchanged: unhurried service, generous cafe food, and a bar where the fire is the natural centre of the evening.
Whatever the time of day you arrive, there's meant to be something delicious waiting. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all served, seven days a week. In the summer months the cafe opens daily from 9.00am to 9.30pm. In winter the rhythm shifts — breakfast runs daily from 7am to 10am, with lunch and dinner served until 8.00pm. The hotel notes that hours may be reduced during the quieter winter months and opening times are subject to availability, so a quick call ahead is worth making if you're visiting off-season.
Between mealtimes, the bar carries the day: drinks shared while photos are compared, boots drying by the fire, and tomorrow's route argued over amicably.
Te Anau is the town people come back to. Days here are spent out in Fiordland — cruising Milford or Doubtful Sound, drifting through the glow worm caves, taking a historic cruise on Lake Te Anau, or walking the region's trails. Bailiez is built for the other end of those days, when boots come off and a hearty meal arrives without ceremony.
That role extends to event weekends too. The hotel plays host to fixtures such as the Distinction Hotels Te Anau Tennis Invitational, the Kepler Challenge and the Tour of Southland, and an all-day cafe and bar is exactly where competitors, supporters and spectators regroup.
Families get genuine consideration. There's a great value kids menu for smaller appetites, a 'side' of highchairs, and kids activity sheets with pencils to keep young hands busy. Free unlimited WiFi rounds it out — whether that means entertaining the children or uploading the day's Fiordland photos before dessert.
Bailiez shares the hotel with Hilights Restaurant, the Distinction Luxmore's other dining room, so hotel guests have two quite different settings to choose from. If you'd rather pass the experience on, Distinction Hotels restaurant gift vouchers are sold online: pick your dollar value and the voucher is delivered straight to your inbox — an easy answer for birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's and Father's Day, or a plain good thank-you.
You'll find Bailiez at 41 Town Centre, inside the Distinction Luxmore Hotel — downstairs for guests, and an easy find for everyone else in the middle of town. Questions about hours, tables or anything else go to the cafe on +64 3 249 7526 or frontdesk@distinctionluxmore.co.nz. Come summer, doors open at 9am and last orders land at 9.30pm; come winter, the day starts earlier at 7am and closes sooner — but the welcome stays the same.