Story — Restaurant in Christchurch

Story is a most excellent restaurant. They have a 3-course set menu they change every week. This week we started with an excellent salmon and juniper dish. This is a classic west-coast USA salmon combination executed perfectly, and the chardonnay pairing was just wonderful! The second course was a duck a l'orange to die for. I have always loved this dish, and made it several times myself - they executed it perfectly. But for me, the best dish was the dessert. It was a magnificent combination of lemon curds, tiny dollops of cream, pear puree, two types of biscuits, and two types of meringue. Each part of the dessert was delicious, but put together it was truly sublime. It was so good that while I sipped the dessert wine - which as excellent - I quickly decided to have sips of water to separate the wine and the dessert as there is no wine that could possibly match the quality of the gestalt experience of eating that dessert. My wife and I will be back, and I recommend anyone go visit...

Story regularly receives top ratings from customers and so my own experience may suggest that I struck it on an off- night. The venue and staff were lovely, though the noise level upstairs was a bit overwhelming the night I dined there. I had very much looked forward to the novelty of the 3 course set menu - not knowing beforehand what culinary delights we were to experience- and we got off to a great start with the asparagus entrée, generous in size and flavour. Sadly, both the main course of lukewarm chicken pieces in sauce and the dessert of several chunks of fruit with a mousse that resembled melting vanilla ice cream were small in size and underwhelming in quality. To put it bluntly there simply wasn't enough food served and it wasn't of good enough quality to justify the $79.00 per head price tag. My companion and I stopped en route home to pick up takeaways. After a 3 course meal and drinks totalling just short of $200.00 we were...

We, a group of four, chose to have dinner at Story with First Table Offer 50% off ( not the $20 dessert ) because the reviews look good. We have had “Trust The Chef” which ended up $49 per person after 50% off. However if you order from the menu with the same dishes each person would only pay $43.75, which is the price without 50% off. The portions are the same. We were thinking that’s NOT a discounted deal at all! The good part was the staff, they were attentive, friendly and helpful. We were served with four small plates (entries) to share - carrots 🥕 cauliflowers, beetroot and bread with spicy flavoured butter; followed by 3 mains to share - crispy potatoes (nicely cooked), eggplants and beef cheeks. Our favourite are cauliflower, crispy potatoes and roasted beetroots. The eggplants and beef cheeks came with the same sauce which was disappointing. Overall, the portions and quality of food are acceptable! Photos posted here for...