Sebastian Feichtner

Review of Harbourside ocean Bar Grill

We decided to go there as we had a gift card and c...

We decided to go there as we had a gift card and celebrated a late anniversary with a nice dinner.

Locationwise the restaurant is fantastic and has a lot of potential.
The starters were enjoyable and nice. Particularly the mushroom linguine, although it was spagetthi more so then linguine.

The main course we got a John Dory entire fish to share. Presentation was unpleasant. It looked as though someone used a sledgehammer to seperate the meat from the rest, creating a large gap. It is not the easiest fish to dish up looking pleasant as a whole but I wish I had taken a picture as it looked simply messy.
The meat itself was very nicely cooked and had a a simple but good taste, the capsicum spread alongside is a bit overpowering for my preference when served with fish.

We got surprised as we were deciding on what desert to get with a compliment of the house desert wishing us a happy anniversary. A very nice and attentive touch.

Service was slow yet servers were very nice (wait staff was attentive and tried their best, despite it being obvious they were understaffed, always polite and helpful). It was rather obvious though that there was not enough staff on which was surprising to me given the reputation this restaurant seems to have in Auckland.

All in all I expected more after hearing a lot about it being one of Aucklands best restaurants. It is a nice restaurant but nothing out of the ordinary aside for the location.