Beautiful setting. Great service. Delicious food. Worth the short drive over the bridge from the…read moreCBD. You won't be disappointed.

Went to the Engine Room last night and they never disappoint…read more Great service by their team and the white bait fritter was amazing Nice ambience fresh menu love going there need to go more often

What a wonderful dinner experience! Visiting from the US and wanted to splurge on one nice night…read moreout to celebrate Valentine's/Anniversary/Boyfriend's birthday in one swing, and this was perfect. As strangers to fine dining, we found the servers to be welcoming and kind and more than happy to explain the menu and ingredients of the dishes. We each got the Chef's Tasting Menu and were treated to 7 small courses that left us more than stuffed and extremely satisfied. The service and food was perfection and with only 11 tables it was incredibly cozy and intimate. Money well spent!

Some perspective, have been coming to O'Connell Street Bistro for many a year now. This was a…read morereturn visit after a number of years living overseas. The food is a real delight, rich complex flavors and beautifully prepared. To be honest I think what brings them down is that they rest a little too much on their past successes and awards. The service is stiff and stand'offish. We tried a number of times to start a conversation and just got stared at blankly. It got to the point it was uncomfortable. I have seen managements responses on another review site to this sort of feedback and they are not accepting of it in any way. A very sad return for us. It has lost something along the many years of success and should look carefully at how it can bring that real warmth of personality back into play.

If you're looking for a fun international Dutch experience here it is. The moment I saw this…read morerestaurant I really wanted to get inside and try out there pancakes. (So the sign mentioned) Perfect opportunity arose a few months back while still pregnant and the need to eat was enormous. Fellow mums can probably associate the love of either savory or sweet, and in my case it was oh so sweet! I must rave of their pancake size portions they are really something, and decorated with such personal touch. I decided that day that I would go for the Kids Pancake which was served with seasonal fruit and a nice surprise. I won't spoil the secret as it was cute and appropriate. Please do try this delight out there Original Dutch Poffertjes which is like a pancake puff, holy moly, really delicious, and can make one go back many times again. This feels like a family owned and happy cafe, with great service.

Sometimes in a man's life there is expertly cooked bacon with the most delicious of accompaniment…read morethat you wouldn't have expected. Enter the Speck from Dutch Delight. First of all let me talk about the place, Dutch Delight is a simple tiled floor with tables and the most interesting varied stuff on the wall, from maps, to postcards and figures promoting strange things. There is a children's room filled with toys for the kids too. But really, let's look and what drew you towards this review, yes I know your secret craving, Bacon .. No need to blush, it's my fetish too. This was crispy well cooked bacon, set onto Dutch pancake with icing sugar, special syrup and banana. When longingly asking for more bacon, this dish only gets better. In summary, if you like bacon on your pancakes .. Eat at Dutch Delight, if you don't like Bacon, then you and I have nothing to say to each other.

Excellent food and service. Seating could have been a bit better however I think they were setting…read moreup for an event.

The Brigham is just great and I am instantly a fan, its the kind of place you would make a special…read moretrip to get to, especially in the warmer months. They are popular for weddings and functions. The restaurant is set on some lovely gardens, so after your lunch you can go and walk in these lovely gardens and hopefully work off some of the calories, if not just grab a picnic rug and lie in the sun for a bit. The food is lovely and fresh, I had the fish and prawns and my husband had the steak and prawns, both dishes were very nice and melt in your mouth cooked to perfection. The service is also great, the owners are very friendly and come and check on you often. I would definitely come here again especially for something special.

Wheels crunching up the gravel, the Tasting Shed looked sophisticated in black. Dining tables that…read morespilled out into the outdoor area are wrapped by the wind + rain proof outdoor gazebo. Everything about it oozed warm comfort and rustic charm. You wouldn't hear the quiet clinking of cutlery on plates and humble conversation here. It was a strict "no-tablecloths" restaurant. And these beautiful wooden tables probably take 5 times more work to maintain. My after-work brain probably took more time than necessary to figure out what the bobbles meant on the Savory to Sweet scale on the menu. With 25 items on the menu (including dessert), it was difficult to nail down what to order. We were advised to order 4 to 5 dishes because they were all entree sizes. Watermelon - smoked olive, goats cheese, baby ganoush This was one surprising combination. I've always been one to systematically eat my way through my plate because I didn't like mixing things together. Give me a fruit and cheese platter, I'd eat each individually. But this is something you'd want to pile a bit of each onto your fork. The watermelon and goats cheese blend beautifully into a creamy smoothie in your mouth. Rich and cooling at the same time - it's a weird sensation. Venison - carpaccio, mushrooms, beets, juniper, walnuts This is a great well-thought out dish with plenty to leave you taste testing, tilting your head and thinking. It was called the Venison dish, and with so much going on, the venison was the solid foundation to bring out the flavours of each ingredient. The sweet tang and slick texture of the mushrooms was paired with the crunch of the walnut and hokey-pokey chunks. We had fun melting the walnut powder on our tongues and poking at the different elements on the dish. The hokey pokey was not your average golden syrup variety but was made with beetroot juice - so even with this explosion of textures, everything blends together. After a mini degustation, one shared sweet dessert was enough! The rosewater was not an understatement - the scent was clear, and sweet, followed by an even sweeter strawberry parfait. It had a subtle summer breeze to this dish and the strawberry parfait an excellent substitute for your average ice cream. The saffron leaves a distinct after taste and cures the dish from being too sweet. With the popularity of restaurants that let you put elbows on tables, tablecloths are stripped away to make way for our laid-back Kiwi culture. If you're looking for a sweet candle-lit dinner, there's other fine-dining restaurants in Auckland CBD. But I'm loving this fusion of casual and fine at The Tasting Shed. The service doesn't make you feel like you're a VIP but more like your host that invited you to their house for dinner. So if you're looking for an excuse out of the city, make this your first stop!

Great tasting summer brunch/lunch place. Beautifully decorated with soft lighting and wooden…read morefurniture. Option to eat indoors or outdoors. Kitchen closed at 1500 to 1700 for dinner prep although small plates are served during that time. European cuisine with heavy Asian influence, think daikon, kimchi, even asam laksa (the Asian snob in me couldn't bring myself to order this). We had the market ceviche (good but we prefer this with a bit more punch), kimchi Mac & cheese (odd pairing which I enjoyed) and the Lamb Shoulder (fantastic!)

Awesome experience. The staff were super awesome and so was the food. The portion sizes were…read moredeceptively good. The service exceptional.

I was fortunate to be taken to lunch the other day at Cibo. I hadn't been for some time so I was…read moreinterested to see if they have maintained their consistently good service and food The service was definitely up to expectation - and the food sublime. The oysters - bluff luckily - were great au natural although my host had the tempura ones which looked just as good. For mains, I had the fish special which was perfectly cooked but I also liked the look of the sashimi stack As usual Cibo delivered high quality and I look forward to my next visit

Great bar, great food, great ambiance! I tagged along with a co-worker to see her friend's new…read moreestablishment in the Ponsonby area, and it was immediately someplace that I wanted to frequent. They have a wonderful selection of wine and food and the staff is genuinely lovely. Our food and libations came out right away and all were equally delicious. Anthony and Benjamin are wonderful hosts and we can't wait to spread the news to our Hawaii friends to come and see what this place is about!!

Good ambience with neutral tones and leather. Prompt service and good selection of wine and…read morecocktails. Small platters looked delicious and there's a good selection of snacks. Plenty of people in here for an after work drink at 5:30pm on a Thursday!!

I had the opportunity to eat dinner here twice while staying at the Hilton, and both were…read morephenomenal experiences. First of all, the ambiance is spectacular, with gorgeous views of the harbor. My first night, dozens of sailboats were out, singly and in groups. The staff was welcoming - a sense of formality, but not pretentiously so. The first night, I had the Signature West Coast Whitebait Fritter, Kūmara Fries, and Mango and Mānuka Honey Cheesecake. The second night, I had the Signature Mediterranean Crab Cakes and the Herb Crusted Mt Cook Alpine Salmon. All were wonderful. The small plates were the Whitebait Fritter and the Crab Cakes. New Zealand Whitebait is a real delicacy, and they were perfectly cooked in what would better be described as a thin omelette rather than a fritter, topped with a deliciously rich buerre blanc and fried capers. Stunning! The Crab Cakes were served with a crayfish lemon mayonnaise and balsamic vinegar. Quite tasty with a nice crunch - use the lemon, it really helps bring out the flavor. Of the two, I would recommend the Whitebait Fritter hands down. It's something I will remember. I got the Kūmara Fries (New Zealand's sweet potato) as a side, and they are delicious. Coated with some parmesan cheese and served with black garlic mayo! So good. And it's a large serving - from looking around, all of their sides are designed for more than one person. That said, I did a pretty good job with the fries by myself. The Herb Crusted Mt Cook Alpine Salmon is another New Zealand-centric dish. The dish is exquisite and overwhelming. The salmon itself was perfection - perfectly cooked and rich in flavor. Then add the delicious pickled fennel, the red capsicum marmalade, the horseradish cream, herb oil, and the saltiness of fish roe? Explosions in your mouth. The Mango and Manuka Honey Cheesecake was rich and delicious with a nice crust. They also had a nice selection of New Zealand beers, wines, and liquors.

Oh my. Not the best first impression of Auckland. We checked into the Hilton and, tired from a…read morelong journey, decided just to have dinner at Fish, right in the hotel. If it was the only place we had eaten, during our visit, we would have thought that dining in New Zealand was awful. The room is very nice, with wonderful views of the Bay and cruise ship port, although a little less formal than I would expect for the price range. The problem began with the staff who, while trying very hard and being very polite, did not seem to understand a word we said. They were very good with the phrase "Thank you, sir," though, and I realize language barriers must be accommodated while traveling. This IS an English speaking country, though. Anyway, everything seemed to go wrong. Ordering wine was an ordeal, and it arrived halfway through our meal. The food presentation was mediocre, and everything needed some spice or seasoning. It felt like a meal served at a retirement village where everyone has diet restrictions. The kicker, though, was the steak. We ordered medium rare. It arrived burned to a crisp. For the first time in years, we actually sent something back. The next attempt came back nearly raw. It was inedible and almost felt like chef was being a jerk. We just left it pretty much untouched and later, noticed the staff huddled in the corner pointing over at our table. To the restaurant's credit, our steaks were removed from the bill, without our even asking, but that is a bit beyond the point. There are many fine dining options within walking distance of Fish. We wish we had known.

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to have a date night with my man at this fine dining…read morerestaurant. Settled into a stunning classic Birkenhead point villa, with stylish contemporary decor, I arrived last night for a booking at 7 pm. I was given the option to enjoy a few drinks at the bar, or be seated and order drinks at the table. I decided table, and order's as I was feeling famished! The restaurant was already busy with early birds, so I knew should we get our orders in sooner than later, as being a Thursday I'm sure they would get busier.(I was right as the night proceeded 7 other tables around us became occupied) I loved the sophisticated Bellini I ordered with prosecco; which I matched with the delicious Alaskan Scallops to start. My second course of Market snapper accompanied by creamy wonderful prawn risotto was delightfully tasty and elegantly presented. Finally for dessert I was complimented on choosing one of the best in house the Chocolate Fondant with Lychee and Lemon Sorbet, which was heavenly! My partner raved about his entree of Roast Pork Belly, main of Vanilla Confit Duck Leg, and dessert of Coconut Date Brulee Tart! I sampled all and 100% agree! Just five star fabulous!

Fine dining restaurant but only A-OK. Let me tell you why:…read more I was taken here for a 1 year anniversary dinner - my bf at the time surprised me, he raved about this restaurant so much, his parents actually owned the building that this restaurant is at so we were definitely excited to celebrate our 1 year anniversary here. He also had not been here in a while but remembered how good the food was so instead of going to the 5-star French Cafe, we opted for Eight Point Two. When we arrived the owner immediately recognised him and we were promptly seated. Beautiful decor and mood lighting, the restaurant is open plan, modern and sleek. Kudos to that. For food, we decided to go all out and have 3 courses each and also a bottle of red. For starters, we ordered the usual bread and butter. We expected the bread to be warm and the butter to be soft enough for you to get a butter knife and easily spread onto the bread. No, not the case. The bread was cold and stiff and the butter was cold and hard.... un-spreadable. Next we had our entree` which was beautiful by the way, pork belly with apple and pear (?) puree` and crunchy cashew nuts with watercress salad. The pork was delectable and the balance of flavours worked well together. So yes, it did get better ... However when our mains arrived (which was beautifully presented) it was a little disappointing.. We both had the Angus eye fillet, medium rare. It arrived, medium well.. almost well but not quite. This beautiful cut ruined, and was a little dry. Forgive me if I'm sounding so picky right now but when you spend almost $300, you expect perfection. This anniversary affair was like a roller coaster, teasing our taste buds with the heavenly pork entree then crashing down on the main. We should have dined at the French Cafe, we spent just as much dining at Eight Point Two as you would there - and with the French Cafe, they are consistent.