Blue Banana — Restaurant in Punaʻauiʻa

We had many recommendations from people for Blue Banana, although it was a bit of a mixed bag. When we walked in without a reservation, we were made to feel like we were the first people ever to simply arrive without calling first, they couldn't believe it. Considering the restaurant was almost entirely empty, we found it pretty crazy that they told us they had no room.

Now I get that they had reservations that might fill the whole place later that night, but we eventually found that these reservations were for many hours later. We explained that we wouldn't stay more than a couple hours and they finally obliged us with a table in the corner.

Staff was a mix of super rude and very friendly, and it was almost entirely filled with Western tourists, many of them excruciatingly loud, drunk, and obnoxious. The food was good but nothing super special, and the cocktails were uninspiring. Prices are high, although not too terrible for this far north.

When we wanted to pay, there was a group of 20 people who decided that all 20 would individually pay with credit cards. After 20 minutes of waiting in line to pay, we asked if there was any way that we could just pay (they had more than one pay station). After another 10 minutes, and still only halfway through the group, they finally let us pay and leave.

Did not live up to the hype for us, and it's too close to the resorts. We love the southern part of the island, it's way way way cheaper and there are almost no tourists at all (yes, we're tourists, but that doesn't mean we like...

Unfortunately the lovely table over the water and decent food was overshadowed by the unnecessarily rude service. I ordered the platter, keen to try both the local tuna and shrimp. When it arrived with no shrimp and after not getting very far with our waitress who didn't speak great English, the manager came over bizarrely passive aggressively, accusing us of being told of the menu change (clearly we hadn't, otherwise we wouldn't be asking about it) and then pulling away my plate without actually asking what I'd like to do given the situation. It was a simple miscommunication that any good manager would have handled politely and courteously. Instead I had to ask for some money off as a gesture and then we were spoken rudely about as we left the restaurant, her clearly thinking we didn't understand her French. We've not experienced anything like that anywhere else in Tahiti. Maybe she was having a bad day and we were unlucky, but looking at other...

Blue Banana was passable. We were told how great of a place it is, and warned to be early or they would give our table reservation away. We arrived about 15 min early and the experience was so rushed we ended up getting picked up by our cab in 45 minutes. The food was good, poussin Cru was similar to our hotel, and the tuna tartar was ok. What floored me was the server told us to show ourselves out and tell the desk our table number was #3.

It’s too bad as I was just finishing my first drink and never got the option to order wine, and if we did, would not have had time to finish one glass let alone a bottle of it.

I guess I just disappointed in the service, we have not been rushed like that in any French speaking country that we have...