Babaili Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in North Island

Our first time dining here, when we booked a table for 8, they didn't tell us we were booked for an upstairs room. We had a person in our group that had great difficulty getting up the stairs. They did say we could sit in the courtyard, but we didn't want that either...as it was a cold night, raining, and a breeze running through. The waiting staff were attentive at first, but after the meals were brought out, it was difficult to get service again. We reordered about 3-4 times for drinks, and 3 more times for more mains. The food was tasty, we tried new dishes...our favourites were the starters. We shared the BBQ selection of lamb, beef tendons, and tripe skewers, definitely all three were tender and delicious. Also the pancakes, they were tasty, like mini pizzas. We ordered dishes that typically are not in the regular Chinese restaurants. Majority dishes we enjoyed, like Brisket and tomato stew, Eggplant and beans (our favourite, we reordered this one again), Hand pulled noodles with brisket, two wide extremely long noodles (reordered again). A good drinks menu, I had a coconut milk, served chilled and was simply refreshing... reordered another one much later. We also had beers, cider, coke zero, and pomegranate juice. Overall we had an enjoyable experience. But communications, and service could be...

Vegan options galore! We sat in their covered ‘outdoor’ area with the open fireplace warming our backs. Yes, our clothes smelt like a wood fire the next day but it was a really cozy dinning experience!

The restaurant style is on the fine dining scale for sure. The staff are very attentive and the tables were nicely laid.

We ordered their seasonal mocktail (Nashi Pear), a Rhubarb and Mandarin Soda, Wood Ear Mushroom Salad, Xi’an Cold Noodles, and their Xi’an Hand Pulled Noodles (Vegan). We accepted the offer of a second free noodle — the dish is usually a single long noodle as per tradition. But the restaurant has taken feedback and now includes two long noodles per bowl.

All the dishes were fantastically seasoned! We wondered if the Xi’an Hand Pulled Noodles could’ve had a bit more chilli and sichuan pepper but maybe that’s exactly how it should be served! On our way out, we did notice there is self serve chilli oil on the bar if you were sitting inside.

If you sit ‘outside’ you can see the barbecue chefs working and hear the serve bell being rung. I liked watching the noodles...

One of the worst experiences. Ordered 5 different things and none of them was good. Poor staff training as well. Servers didn't know what they were explaining about. I asked about the tea flavor and the answer was "oh, I prefer this than that" which i never expected to hear. We ordered the tendon skewer, and we got something that we didn't expect, we asked if we got the right one and the server said "I think you got the right one". He didn't even try to go to the kitchen and ask about it. When we were about the pay, the server said that was not tendon skewer, kitchen is awared of that as well. But they still served that.And we also ordered 2 same noodles with different spiciness. When we got the noodles they didn't explain which is which, so we had to call them again, but the solution was to put the chilli oil on the table. The menu said that we can choose 3 levels of the spiciness. I can't really understand why the level was on the menu if we have to adjust the level. It was for sure, the worst choice of this year, I would...