Duke's Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in North Island

Some good food but overall a disappointing experience. The deep fried Camembert was delicious, crunchy on the inside, creamy on the inside. The soup of the day was an unexpected flavour bomb of deliciousness. Those were the hits. However, their kids mac ‘n cheese was rich with Parmesan - great for an adult but way too rich and challenging a flavour for a child’s dish, especially the in quantities they added. The venison pappardelle was unexpectedly sweet, nothing in the dish description prepared you for having fruit in the dish. As a person that finds fruit with meat inedible, it was a disappointing dish.

We were asked to order our choice of children’s dessert when we placed our main food order, which we did no problem. So it was disappointing to be told about 30 minutes later that they’d run out of vanilla ice-cream and we had to choose something else. A hurried replacement was chosen initially chosen, but changed again after about

5 minutes. We were then advised by staff, because we had changed our minds, we would have to wait 15 minutes for them to put 3 small scoops of ice cream in a plate. After pointing out that we were only in this position because of their lack of vanilla that was not advised when we placed our order, they managed to produce the kids sundaes within about 5 min. Unfortunately covered in chocolate syrup that we had specifically asked not to have added.

So overall, a...

We came here the other day while staying at the Prince's Gates hotel. We had the early bird three course menu. The entree was kumara soup and the camembert wedges. The kumara soup is quite yum, pairs well with the bread and the portion was generous. Compare to the soup, the wedges was just ok. I think it is lacking some component, maybe needing a salad with it. It doesn't make sense how much you get with the soup option and the cheese wedge option being only 4 cubes of it. The mains we had was the rib eye steak and the chicken. Both options was the highlight of the meal, very well cooked, every components of the dish was excellent. Love the mash potato, roasted veges together. For dessert we had the caramelised custard and the brownie. The custard was too well-done, as it actually gone past the creaminess and become eggy. The orange citrus taste was not bad, the shortbread was just average and could be better. The brownie was good, but could be better pair with a lighter flavour ice cream like vanilla as chocolate kind of overlaps and becomes flavour fatigue after a strong flavoured meal. All in all, the early bird three course meal was still very enjoyable and will highly recommend...

I had booked a table for my Wife and I as we were celebrating an anniversary and thought looking on line that this looked like a great place to go as it was near our hotel and the photos looked very good, once we arrived we were pleasantly greeted and quickly seated out the back near the small pool they have and that was about the end of our good experience, after been seated and given the drinks and food menu we waited about 30 mins before one of the staff brought us water and asked if we would like a drink, as we were celebrating we thought lets get a glass of Champagne but was quickly advised they are all out but we can have Prosecco (I hate to break it to people but Prosecco is not Champagne) so we decided to have a cocktail instead, by now we had looked over the menu and many dishes had been crossed off and only a very average selection was left to choose from that felt more like something you would get a bar than a restaurant, we had a drink and quickly left feeling very disappointed as there was little to no atmosphere and the delay on any service was taxing, coupled with the uninspiring menu that was currently on offer we would rather take our...