Síso bar and eatery — Restaurant in Ōrākei

It’s truffle season, and to celebrate, we treated ourselves to a special lunch at Siso on a rainy day. It was the perfect setting – cozy and beautiful inside, especially with the autumn vibes. We were particularly grateful for the fireplace near our table at the back of the main restaurant area, which kept us warm.

Siso offered a special truffle lunch menu for a very reasonable price ($55). This set menu included your choice of starter and main course, both featuring seasonal truffles, and a glass of wine. We could also add freshly sliced truffle to any dish for the additional $10 per gram.

We decided to try all the dishes for a full experience. I went for the beef tartare as an entree, it delicious and tender with a wonderful truffle flavour. For the main course, I opted for the braised beef cheek linguine. The meat was tender, but perhaps not as juicy as I expected, and the linguine unfortunately was overcooked and not al dente.

There was a slight misunderstanding with the truffle addition. We were expecting thinly sliced truffle straight to our plates, as per instagram post from Siso, but instead, got shaved truffle served in a sauce plate. While delicious, it was a bit tricky to distribute evenly over the dish. Thankfully, the staff were very accommodating and sliced the other portion of truffle for us, but it wasn’t quite as thin as expected, because they didn’t have a proper truffle slicer available. The flavour was there, but unfortunately the expected presentation wasn’t.

Overall, it was a lovely experience, even with the small hiccups. We’ve had much more wonderful meals at Siso before, and this one was still enjoyable. The staff were especially kind to accommodate my friend’s dietary restriction and offer her a delicious alternative (calamari, instead...

Was excited to hear that a new restaurant had opened in Remuera. Having recently been featured on Denizen, with an appealing Mediterranean menu, we were keen to support local and give it a go. We ordered a variety of small plates to share, the flat bread was great and the Polpetta meatballs were tasty. Our waitress was excellent and very attentive. Unfortunately, the positives end there. After consuming the bluff oysters, our friend instantly felt ill. First of all, they weren’t the greatest looking oysters, the one I had consumed had a slight bitter taste to it. After having bluff oysters at The Depot and Onslow recently, these fell very below par. However, the review doesn’t end here. After pointing out our misfortune to who we assume to be the owner, our concerns were instantly dismissed. When paying for the bill, we were again dismissed with a condescending response and was told that “if she needs to go to the hospital for food poisoning, give me a call and I will pay for the bill”. Due to the terrible way this was handled we will not be coming...

We were recommended this place by some friends that had a great experience recently. We booked, however the night before we had realised we had been here before, and had a sub par experience but thought we’d give it another shot at redemption. A Saturday night and this restaurant was sold out of half of the menu - we weren’t told until after we had ordered drinks and was too late to leave. We then ordered the lamb ($96) and then got told shortly before the food came out that they had no potatoes for it. I don’t know why we weren’t told these things as soon as we had sat down? The service from the young guy was great, and I felt a bit bad because he could feel the vibes from us. Overall the food was average for the price tag along with us not being able to get the dishes we wanted. I would have left a review in person, but when we were taken up to pay, the young waitress printed the bill and just walked away without asking how our food was or anything. She just came back after I had paid and said thanks....