Amazonita — Restaurant in Christchurch

The most thoroughly disappointing experience. My friend had booked a table for a group of us over a week in advance for cocktails and nibbles on her birthday. When we arrived the table was not ready and we were made to wait approximately 15min for it, disappointing considering a prior booking had been made. After we were part way through drinking our cocktails and our nibbles arrived and were put on the table we were then informed of an apparently key part of amazonitas policy which had failed to be conveyed to us earlier (despite ample time) or on the phone when the booking was made. This policy is that unless you are ordering dinner meals you cannot have a table in the main bar/food area. They promptly picked up our food which we had just started to nibble at and informed us we would need to vacate the table and led us down a durgy corridor past the toilets and with crushed peanuts all over the sticky floor. We were left incredibly disappointed and asked to talk to the manager. Upon the 2ICs arrival he hurried my friend away from the rest of the group making her talk to him in isolation outside of the bar area where we could not see or hear her. He gave off an impression of arrogance and made it clear it was a mutual communication issue regarding their policy, when clearly it was not our fault. The least that could have been done was to knock the price of the nibbles off the tab, although they did provide us with a bottle of Prosecco to share. When we left to pay we noticed the table we had been removed from was empty and saw people at other tables with only nibbles for food. The one and only thing I can commend from this experience was the exemplary customer service of the lady in the separate bar who possessed customer service and communication skills your 2IC could very clearly...

Hopefully this is seen as constructive criticism. If you wish to maintain a high rating with good customer return this might be worth considering. I'll start with the positive. Good food nicely presented, lovely decor with great seating arrangements. Now the negative. Firstly, we are grown-ups, we reserved a table online knowing we'd only be allowed an allotted time of 2hrs as it's a busy Saturday night fair enough, however, don't keep reminding us how much time we have before you throw us out, it made for a rushed experience and our waitress (Genevieve) came across as arrogant and rude, it's also worth noting that we are at the mercy of the speed your wait staff take orders and chefs turn out the food, trust me we eat fast, 2hrs didn't give time for a dessert, if the kitchen had got it ready in time no doubt the waitress would have asked us to stand and eat it outside. If the menu says the lamb rack is 6 point and you bring out 5 then try to charge more than the price stated on the menu we aren't going to be impressed so don't expect us to be. Waitress Genevieve - don't pour a grown mans gravy onto his meal at the table, surely it's in a jug so he can choose the amount he would like himself or even choose to leave it altogether, if you're adamant that the meal has to have it, pour it on in the kitchen. Also it's rude to reach between our conversation to collect one empty glass again giving the impression we are simply in your way. Mr DJ music played at full blast in the restaurant area is a no thanks, ok for the bar side maybe but we were catching up with friends it would have been nice to be able to hear our conversation. We felt really unwelcome here which was a shame as we had great expectations. I would recommend your food but not your service...

Came with a chef friend of mine who owns his own successful restaurant for drinks, nibbles & a meal. I started with a cocktail in a tall glass shaped like bamboo which looked impressive but on closer inspection the drink was 2/3 ice, 1/3 alcohol + mixer. No alcoholic effect at all. Ordered nibbles before mains, but the entree consisting of soggy, cheap, overly oily chips was missing a sauce, which was supposed to come with it.

It wasn’t busy but I couldn’t get the attention of any wait staff so ended up waiting by the food area, where I was ignored for a considerable time before politely asking for sauce. The waitress was extremely rude & slammed down an oily looking mayo/chilli mix on my chip tray without even looking at me.

The squid was not crisp, very small portion to the extent we laughed. $17 is a complete rip off for this miniature portion. Another oily dipping sauce accompanied it. We asked for tomato sauce for the chips because the side sauce was so oily, it was a cheap, nasty brand of sauce. We were so unimpressed with the standard of what should be easy to prepare & do well we left without ordering mains.

I started feeling very unwell within a few hours & ended up extremely nauseous before vomiting & the other end too. Appalling food & service, terrible value for money. The venue itself is beautiful but that is not enough. Will be telling everyone to avoid eating &...