La Quattro — Restaurant in Manawatū-Whanganui

This place was a nice surprise. Is it authentic Mexican food, no, but it still has a Mexican vibe in some of the food flavor profiles. As someone who has visited and eaten in Mexican A LOT, I never have super high hopes for NZ Mexican to be authentic, mostly due to product availability. That being said, the esquites were really good and had a nice flavor when you added the sour cream to it; very reminiscent of elote. The guacamole was ok, but needed needed a bit of lime to really brighten it, that being said I would order it again. The cauliflower taco was very plain, as in the crispy cauliflower lacked flavor and was overpowered by the spicy crema that was slathered on, and my least favorite. The mushroom fajitas were a huge surprise and really delicious. The coconut flavor described on the menu threw me off, but I couldn't really taste it in the dish, plus it's so NICE to finally see fajitas on an NZ Mexican restaurant menu! The rice needed some more flavor, salt, acid, and cilantro. The black beans were nice, but again a tad bland. I had to ask for the black beans as a side. I wish they included the beans with the fajitas as a side, which is more traditional. I also had to ask for a side of their tomato pico, but that is not tomato pico. What is served is all chopped onion and a tiny bit of tomato, no garlic, not slat, no lime, no cilantro; calling this onion pico would probably be more on point. The margarita traditional is good and not too sweet, which is what I prefer. The decor is fabulous and reminded me of American Mexican restaurants. The service was very slow and not very attentive with staff standing behind the bar/register just hanging out. I had to get up and ask for our plates to be cleared after 20 mins. Overall I would recommend this place and I would...

We've been here a couple of times now and the food has always been very good. However I can't rate 5 stars because there are some serious miscommunications issues between management and staff. I rang in and booked a table for my friends and I to have a meal in a few days time for my birthday. Nothing out of the ordinary, the staff member on the phone took my booking and said it was confirmed. When we arrived on the night, we were told that they weren't taking any bookings that evening, and there was only a very limited menu available, due to the vintage festival on in town. They looked in their reservations book and plain as day was my booking for that evening. This was met with a 'oh well, what do you want us to do about it?' kind of attitide. Which was very unexpected. I would like to know why you had not communicated to your staff not to take bookings for that particular evening, and why you had failed to notice in your book, which you should be checking every day, that there was bookings? Surely the staff member taking my booking would have found out eventually, why did she not mention that she had been taking bookings? A simple phone call to update me would have been enough, instead of waiting for us to come in. We were left trying to figure out where to go and what was even open, what we could eat. The reason I chose La Quattro is because of the wide vegetarian and vegan range, and I wanted to include my vegan friend in our meal out. We struggled to find a place after that had such a wide range of...

We went over the Easter weekend so the staff told us the kitchen was 15-20 behind, which sounded ok for us. But reality was way different... They took around 10-15 minutes only to take the order (the first time). After 25 minutes I asked another waitress how much longer where they to at least the entry - a simple guacamole and chips... She came back saying that our order was mixed up with someone else's and she took it again. The same waitress came back 5 -10 minutes after, for taking the order for a 3rd time. We finally waited 1 hour since we sat down to get our entry.... No apologies or explanations whatsoever. Food was ok, but honestly nothing special or great. The salad was very small and the chicken fajita's only good thing was the chicken all the sides were average, as you might see in the photos. In my personal everything we tried was overpriced, just not worth the price or the wait.

Unfortunately I would not...