The Black Olive — Restaurant in Bay of Islands-Whangaroa Community

Easy to find - across the road from BP. Limited off-street parking. Some road side parking nearby. Some very nice dining environments - and some not-so-pleasant. Limited bathroom facilities.

Dine in and take-out menus avaible. Extremely uneven dine-in food quality and service. Friday 22 Sept. Large group pre-booked for 6pm. I arrived 10 minutes "early" and found the assigned dining zone ... adjacent to the bar and the kitchen servery areas. Noisy and overcrowded. Half an hour to settle in, and then some orders taken. Seemed a rather haphazard event given the size of the party and that the group was squeezed in along two large extended table zones with no space between adjacent patrons sitting chair to chair in all directions. It was nice that the children got nice warm chips within 15 minutes of ordering. Sadly their not-even-warm pizzas arrived an hour later. When the bulk of the meals were ready, rather than serve them the dish name was announced and dinners struggled to hear because of the poor acoustics and generally noisy zone. Not convivial dining. My pizza arrived about an hour into the foray - nicely on a 'tile' (not warmed) and not cold! My first drink was the only drink order/round. (As with most diners there). Some dessert menus were made available. Premises and layout more typical of a beach side cafe. Some food presentation was excellent looking - may be a chef present, but overall food preparation and arrival rather lacklustre! ... and nothing hot! Not a good...

We were lucky to get one of the spare tables, we arrived around 1730 upon arrival we noticed a few tables were reserved, so if you are looking to dine here with a family, i highly recommend you book in advance. The parking is limited so get in early as it will pack up. In regards to the food, we ordered the surf n turf quality was a thick slab of Scotch fillet cooked to perfection along with a couple of whole king prawns. They cater very well for quality and not like the auckland restaurants where it all looks and tastes the same, it even came with char grilled calamari quality 100%. Now to address the common question, the portion size...lets say, you get your money's worth, the portion size is similar to lone star if you've dined there then you will know what i mean, large plate just with extra love and quality. The service was great, the waitress even gave a colouring book with pencils for our toddler which was very kind of her. We also order the chefs recommendation which was the seafood chowder, not disappointed, again not like your normal seafood chowder where you would expect the cream, and seafood mix etc, they had their own flavours but still reminded you that it tastes like how a seafood chowder...

Was looking forward to a night out with friends and family at Black Olive. The room was arranged for us as we were expecting a crowd. 3 of our guests didn't arrive. And because of this "inconvenience" the waitress started the night off with a huge "telling off" stating that we should have informed them about our guests not showing up before hand ( like we have control over this) they had to turn guests away for us to have this room and we actually didn't need this room anymore (after decorating it) as if we weren't paying customers ? This was humiliating and annoyed our guests as well. This attitude did not make us feel welcome at all. Following this the waitress leaves the room then comes back in with an over the top happy way about her and treating us like we should have been treated from the beginning (it was strange to witness). The food was O.K. the pizza was the best (for price). But the customer service is what would put us off from going back...