KEY POINTS:
Good historic hotels are getting harder to find. Increasingly the elderly pubs of the nation are being gentrified and scrubbed clean. Their walls are being painted up nice, a colour consultant is hired, and the big boys move in and take what was once the character of the place and reshape it into something more... marketable?
The history that was once in the walls is reframed and hung on the walls. And that's the difference.
In some cases new owners simply go to a secondhand shop and buy up old pictures to put up and create the illusion of something historic.
Yes, a good old hotel is getting hard to find.
Unless you head to the West Coast, where the lack of tourists for two decades from the 60s meant the grand dames of the hotel trade were there for locals and not thrill-seeking backpackers or tourists in search of flash accommodation.
These hotels didn't change much over the years, and nor did their clientele. Both just got older, a little more saggy, a little more creaky in their joints.
But they still breathe character and warmth - few more than the Historic Empire Hotel in Ross, half an hour south of Hokitika.
Ross - population about 350 - may just seem a cluster of houses, a school, a museum, and a few shops. But it can boast three pubs.
But it is the two-storey Empire - which you see side-on at the sharp turn in the road when you are travelling south - which beckons you.
There has been a hotel on this site since 1866 but the present one was built in 1908 after its previous incarnation was destroyed by fire.
It was a Saturday afternoon when we parked outside - and you can't do that in big cities - and pulled open the swinging doors of leadlight.
The vast room was warmed by a huge open fire and the walls were covered in photos that no one had gone to a secondhand shop to find.
The long bar was stacked with liquor of all persuasions, there were shields and trophies around the walls, faded posters, and that famous - and on the West Coast, obligatory - photo of Michael Joseph Savage. Equally, though, there were photos of local identities, and a worn-looking poster asking for information about the mysterious death of an itinerant on the beach some years before.
This was a pub that was steeped in local character - and a few of them sat at the bar watching the rugby on a large screen above the pool table where a game was in progress.
The place was cosy, dark and welcoming. The owner Mark Brown offered his hand and asked where we were from.
Mark showed us to our choice of rooms upstairs - we were the only occupants in a place that sleeps 20 in the hotel and has a further 14 cabins.
"If you'd have come in a couple weeks we'd have been full,' said Mark.
"Whitebait season.'
After we'd unpacked I went back to the bar and chatted with Mark.
He had spent the early part of his life in Christchurch working in pubs but when the glue-sniffers moved in the Square he thought it was time to pack up the family and leave. So 20 years ago he bought the Historic Empire Hotel.
"Any regrets?' I asked.
"Oh, hundreds, mate. Hundreds.'
But he was smiling so I didn't take him seriously.
He asked me what we wanted for dinner.
"We can do burgers, steaks, venison steaks, fish... You want whitebait, we can do that? Toasted sandwiches, bacon and eggs...'
I stopped him because venison steaks sounded good.
"You'd like port wine gravy with that, it's pretty good,' he said.
Mark soon came back with the venison steaks on a large plate stacked with fresh part-boiled veges and chips, and an aluminium pot of gravy.
Someone on the screen scored a try and the dozen exploded in cheers.
I dipped a sliver of perfectly cooked venison into the and tasted the best gravy I've ever had, I think.
And so the night drifted away in a great old pub with friendly, unpretentious people.
We slept soundly in the big bed and the following morning had breakfast at the bar.
We paid an absurdly small bill then shook hands.
"See ya,' he said.
He, and his wonderful old hotel, undoubtedly will.
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NEED TO KNOW
Where to stay
Historic Empire Hotel,
19 Aylmer St, Ross, South Westland. Ph (03) 755 4005.
Mark Brown's Historic Empire Hotel gravy
Quantities and ratios will vary according to need and taste, but here's how Mark makes it. It tastes better from an aluminium pot in the Historic Empire Hotel, of course.
"You make a gravy, just an ordinary gravy like you would from a roast, and then you add two tablespoons of raspberry jam, or blackberry jam, that's pretty good too. You stir all that slowly and then you add about half a small glass of port. Stir that slowly and if you want to thicken it up you add more gravy. But really that's it.'
- Extra, HoS
