Filly — Restaurant in Maungakiekie-Tāmaki

I had wanted to try Filly for a while after just having some of their drinks, and saw their cabinet food. The cakes in there look amazing, some inspired by Asian flavours such as ube (purple taro) and coconut.

The tables were a little sticky and there was sugar spilled on the seats, so points were taken away for cleanliness. There was also a bit of sauce on one of the menus.

The drinks we got: latte, matcha latte (hot and iced) and Kit Kat milkshake. The coffee was nice, quite strong and smooth, nothing wrong with it, decent coffee. The matcha was also quite strong and rather bitter, not the best but I appreciate them having this on the menu and not making it too sweet or adding cinnamon to it. The Kit Kat milkshake just tasted like a normal chocolate milkshake.

Food we got: Ube cake, Can't Decide (big breakfast equivalent), Risotto, Fried Chicken, waffles and King Prawn linguine (no photo).

Can't Decide was pretty standard and decent portions. The most stand out thing was the name of the dish, otherwise average. Risotto was buried under salad greens, a little bit bland but creamy enough. The fried chicken and chips was the lunch special but the portion was small compared to the other dishes. The chicken and fries were a bit over cooked in my opinion, the chicken was in very small pieces and crunchy, but the inside was dry. The waffles were really sweet, but had a nice texture, a bit crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. There was a lot of cream and fruits around it to balance out the sweetness, overall ok. I didn't try the linguine but I heard it was alright.

The ube cake was probably the best thing. The flavour was there and it wasn't overly sweet. Slightly dry but the ube buttercream helped with that.

Not too crowded with people and there was plenty of seating when we were there.

Overall a pretty good experience. I might go back to try more of the...

Bit of an overdue review but I had brunch with my cousin here earlier this year before hitting the shops in Sylvia Park and I was pleasantly surprised. Decent food and service. I found the side of bircher so delish and I'm not normally a fan of bircher muesli - I might need that recipe! Looking forward to going back during the holidays.

Well I didn't go back during the holidays but I did go back recently with a couple of girlfriends and yes, I ordered the same meal (Can't Decide). I'm a creature of habit. The bircher has been replaced so was a tad bummed about that but oh well. I did enjoy my meal but I think the sausage needs to either be a bit more chunky in size or two sausages rather than one. I really don't like the tomatoes - basically tomatoe water all over the other components on your plate once you cut into it. This should be replaced with a fresh tomato salsa or maybe even spinach. I especially enjoyed the vanilla cake I had. I love cream filling and the cake wasn't dry at all. I sat outside this time (no free tables indoors) and my food went cold real quick so next time...

We stopped by quite late in the afternoon after shopping at Sylvia Park. We followed the signs at the new second floor food court and ended up taking the stairs down to the cafe entrance. the cafe is just by the carpark on the ground floor, close the entrance to the K mart. The menu looked really interesting but I wasn't very hungry so we just grabbed some drinks and some cabinet food. They were closing but still let us sit down to eat the cake. We did end up having the drinks in takeaway containers just in case. We shared the chocolate cake and it was really tasty. The cake itself was quite light and rich. The icing wasn't super sweet and was still quite creamy. I tried the yuzu and mint soda. It was almost like lemonade and quite refreshing. It had chunks of candied peel at the bottom which was an interesting surprise. The snickers smoothie just tasted like peanut butter. With the tastings this good I imagine the actual food would be quite nice.

Edit: The hash was more pieces of potato rather than the shredded and fried kind. The hot chocolate was ok, not very sweet but not very...