Woodside Bar Dining Functions — Restaurant in Ōtara-Papatoetoe

Had quite a disappointing lunch, particularly as my previous visits here were just awesome.

Our waitress explained to us that everyone was new - and hence we accepted the experience - just paid the bill and went elsewhere.

But this was such an awesome place to get lunch - and I would hate for it to lose more patrons because of very simple and correctable things like:

1. Offering patrons drinks or a beverage menu on initial seating. We were seated and then forgotten about. We had to first flag a waitress down for the drink’s menu - and then flag one down again to take our order. It was not that busy - it honestly felt like nobody cared.

2. Our waitress was really kind and graciously polite - but was clearly new and unsupervised because she forgot about our starters and as result, in addition to the long wait we endured - we did so without any starters. I left without having the drink I ordered. Don’t get me wrong – we were eventually credited for not serving us with the starters – but this didn’t need to happen.

3. The drinks strangely - came as individual units...like we received one cocktail, then after 12-15 minutes another and then a coke, and then after 4-5 minutes another. In the end, I had to walk to the barmen and cancel the outstanding drinks - because they hadn't arrived, and our meal was almost done.

4. While at the bar, I so that the barmen was not busy, so I asked him for a beer from the tap, and he then served me one half filled with foam. I thought he was joking but he then served it to me thinking it was normal. I was quite shocked and after refusing to take it - the manager explained that he too was new and gave me a new glass.

5. I had brought friends from out of town because I raved about the fish and chips and your pizzas.

6. The fish and chips were quite oily, and the pizzas didn’t have the usual amount of topping and were rather tasteless. It was just such a disappointing lunch date with friends that we looked so forward to.

Really hoping that this was just a bad Sunday and not representative of...

. Horrible service I went here for lunch during a work function. Upon arriving at the restaurant, I thought it looked nice and was optimistic. However, the service was terrible. We had around 16 or so at the lunch, and they didn’t even put enough glasses on the table for us all. The food is also pretty expensive; you’re looking at $28-30 for a burger and $28 for a pizza. The waitress forgot to take some people’s orders. The food was coming out at the most random and inconsistent times. The staff failed to bring people’s drinks out! And other orders were forgotten about. I ordered a pulled pork burger which was made twice 😂 (no one else ordered one). The actual food itself was disappointing. There wasn’t much flavour at all. One colleague ordered the wings, which had zero flavours. Another said his ribs had no taste. To top it all off, they charged us $20 to bring out a cake (which we brought ourselves) for a colleague who was having his birthday. The waitress even asked us if she had to light the candles 😂 (what else are we paying you for?!). Some colleagues even returned their steaks because they were well done when they asked for medium rare! One colleague sent hers back twice! I honestly have never had a restaurant experience this bad for some time. The employees here must redo their hospitality course, and management needs organisational changes. The service was so bad, and you’d think we were at Karen’s diner…. Seriously disappointed; waste of...

Cocktail towers - not a good experience for us this time!

My family & I came around 8pm on Friday 15/08 & were looking forward to enjoying the “cocktail tower” as advertised on social media. However things took a turn when it took almost an hour (50 minutes) for the 6 cocktails to come out. The “tower/ stand” was also not available & 4/6 of the cocktails came in normal glasses making the whole experience not worth the hype nor money. During the 50 minute wait we had 2 staff members come at different times to our table and ask if we were still waiting on anything but still nothing. It seems the system and keeping track of orders is not efficient as I had also ordered shots via the QR code & was told they were unavailable and a mistake on the menu.

Also upon observation there was only 1 staff member making the cocktails and when we approached the bar to ask her how long the cocktails would be her response was “whoever took your order should’ve told you there was going to be a little wait”. This response left me baffled because almost an hour is not a “little wait” & the tone/ attitude when we’ve already waited so long already was disappointing.

The female staff that was greeting customers at the entrance and waiters near the tables were all fantastic but unfortunately the bar staff and person who was making the cocktails has our family not wanting to come back which is a shame as Woodside...