Love Asia Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Ōtara-Papatoetoe

If you are thinking of going to this place, please please read this review.

Me and my friend went to this place on 14/02/2022.

I got no idea why there are so many good reviews on this place. Hands down this is the worst restaurant I ever dined in. We ordered Hainanese chicken on rice, grilled lemon grass chicken pho, shaking beef, hongkong style noodles, and chicken nibbles.

No lies, literally after 4~5 mins we finished the order, the food was served.

Honestly best one of these horrible dishes were chicken nibbles which I am pretty sure they bought packaged frozen chicken nibbles and fried them. This was probably the only dish that they ‘cooked’ on demand (just refried them in a fryer) whereas all the other dishes taste like they were microwaved. The rice noodles in the pho was really sticky which could mean that they cooked it ages ago and microwaved when ordered. Grilled chicken also looked microwaved.

Shaking beef is nothing like your ordinary shaking beef you’d expect from a normal restaurant. The texture is slimey and disgusting.

The fried noodles had no flavour so we made an effort to complain but the staff said it’s cooked with just oil and soy sauce (she was saying in a way i shouldn’t really expect much from this noodles). I still complained that it should still have flavour as it just tasted like microwaved noodles. She took it back and ‘cooked’ it again. It was the bloody same noodles but it had really slimey texture which was really disgusting…. I would have really believed that they used saliva to season it. Did she really think the quality of the noodles was good enough when the price for it was $21??

The cucumber piece that came with Hanainese chicken was disgusting and tasted off. The dish shouldnt be called hanaise chicken as the rice is just dry and chicken just tasted as if they had to run to paknsave to get a roast chicken. Actually I take it back. Paknsave roasted chicken would have tasted so much better.

As I walked to the counter to pay for the disgusting food we had, I sneaked a peak at the kitchen. Unsurprisingly they had big plastic containers and it looked like the staff were scooping it out of the containers to serve. The total bill was $95 between two people without drinks and dessert.

I was genuinely disgusted by how they prep the food and of course the quality of the food.

I’d never come back here . They should actually pay people to dine in the restaurant. Thank god i didn’t get food poisoning...

The restaurant is quite big with two large private rooms on either side of the main dining area. The main dining area is very colourful with lanterns and wall decoration. There is also a huge TV on one of the wall. What first got my attention after entering was the dessert cabinet. After getting to our table, we looked through the large menu. They have quite a lot of different food available. To me, it looked like it was primarily Vietnamese with some Thai and Malaysian influenced dishes. Ordering was fairly easy as you just write down the dish that you want on a piece of paper and hand it off to the staff. We ordered one of the platters and a couple of main dishes to share. We ordered one of the caramelised pork belly with sticky rice and I really enjoyed it. The sticky rice had a really nice texture and the pork belly had the flavours of shrimp paste which I really enjoy. The grilled lemongrass chicken noodle soup was also quite tasty. The chicken wasn't dry and the soup had a nice flavour with the pork rinds. We also tried their beef rendang with roti. It unsurprisingly isn't proper rendang, it was more like a coconut beef stew. I enjoyed the flavour of the rendang and liked the crispness of the roti. We also got the Special Love Asia platter. The platter had a variety of different meat like the beef in betel leaves or the spring roll, as well as the herbs and lettuce and the vermicelli. It also came with rice paper so you can roll it all up to make a fresh rice roll with your filling of choice. We also had some dessert. The fried ice cream is what you expect and you can choose the flavour of the ice cream inside. They didn't have the salted egg sponge cake which I wanted to try so ended up with the cashew cake which was more moussy than nutty. The place has surprising tasty food. I think it was the novelty of the DIY rice rolls which made me really enjoy the meal. There was also quite a lot of parking but it was full when we went so we had to park on the road. The place itself wasn't too difficult to find, just keep an eye out for the lights. Edit: The vege fried rice was nice but a bit bland. The satay roti had a nice sauce but the roti was a bit...

I rarely write reviews, but after our experience at Love Asia, I feel compelled to share what happened. We chose this restaurant to celebrate my son’s 21st birthday—a milestone occasion that came after a very busy weekend of hosting and planning. We were expecting a memorable evening, but what we experienced was anything but.

After being seated at 8:15 pm and receiving our meal at 8:40 pm, a waiter began vacuuming right at our table while we were eating. This completely disrupted our dinner and tarnished the special atmosphere we had hoped for. Despite raising my concerns, the response from the staff and management was dismissive and unhelpful.

I demanded a full refund for our $300+ meal, but instead of promptly addressing the issue, I was told to escalate the matter to head office. Where Amy and Fred have stalled in making a decision for the last six days after numerous emails on my part. When you’re celebrating a milestone like a 21st birthday, you expect a certain level of respect and professionalism—and that night, we received none.

I’ve since taken steps to ensure that my experience is known publicly, as I believe customers deserve better than to have their celebrations ruined by poor service. I sincerely hope the management takes these complaints seriously and makes the necessary improvements.

If you’re looking for a stress-free, respectful dining experience, respectfully,...