Highwater Eatery — Restaurant in North Island

the food was fantastic. The raw oysters and whole flounder were among the best I have ever had. I enjoyed every morsel of my food, and left the flounder with a clean skeleton. the service, however, was disappointing, mainly due to one particular snobbish waitress. Let me elaborate. I went by myself. She put me at a window bar seat, and pretty much ignored me after bringing me water. When I took the napking and silverware from the seat next to me (there being none at my seat), she promptly showed up, took those away from me, telling me that they were for other people. Fortunately, a second waitress helped me with my order. She was warm and helpful, a wonderful human being. After I had placed my order, the first waitress gingerly came back with my napkin and silverware. After all, I had to eat. Fast forward to the end of my meal. The first waitress showed up and asked me about dessert. I said I was full. 10 minutes later, more people came in. The first waitress miraculously popped out of thin air, seated them right next to me, completely ignoring my existence in the process. I had to move out of my seat (because the new comers had lots of stuff with them), and sat with my back against the table. Fortunately, the second waitress noticed what was going on, and quickly helped me with my payment. It was unfortunate that what could have been a very positive experience got utterly spoiled by one single waitress, in the same way that a dead fly had handed in the midst of caviar. But this is life, and whatever...

Highwater is a new eatery on Lower Cuba St, positioning itself at the upper end of the restaurant scene. The menu is based around different sizes of plates to share, with a really interesting, eclectic wine list to accompany it. We really enjoyed everything we ordered, including oysters with quince sorbet, kingfish crudo (raw fish with a soy-based sauce), a creative take on venison tartare, wagyu beef, duck parfait (paté), cucumber with warehou and more. Service was attentive, and while the waitstaff's knowledge of wine wasn't high you can expect it to improve with time in a new venue. My only disappointments were, firstly, that the kitchen wouldn't do the "chefs' selection" menu for 3 people on our table of 5 - it had to be the whole table. This option is $70 per head for a selection of dishes covering the whole menu i.e. you don't have to choose - it's all brought to you. Their reasoning for not doing it for 3 of us was that with different menus, the whole table wouldn't all be eating at the same time. I think that's up to us to decide, don't you? Similarly, when we started ordering dishes individually, our waitperson stopped us to check we were going to share. Yes we were - we had decided to each order our top choices - but again, up to us what we each eat and how, thanks. Highwater has great food and service, but must be careful not to fall into that trap of telling its...

Did not really enjoy this place. It was high priced, overly so in my view for what we got. Meal for two ended up at just under $200. Bought a red wine that I thought was $8 a glass but was charged $17, which was the bigger measure glass price, so I was overcharged. Half lamb was dry and was not pleasant served with no vegetables because this restaurant has all vegetable dishes as extras. I wish restaurants would return to meals that are balanced with vegetables as part of the dish rather than serving components of a meal as separate items. The one dish I did like was the Snapper Crudo, although for the small amount of fish for $27 was in my opinion rather expensive. 4 Lamb ribs also at $24 was high priced. The venue itself didn't inspire, being rather like a long corridor alongside the open kitchen. Staff were attentive, ensuring water was topped up. By comparison, also tried the restaurant Arnesto's on another night and would recommend Arnesto's as best of the two, although they also serve vegetables as a separate dish. If however you are happy with the sharing dish style of Highwater, then this may be worth you try, as other customers around me seemed happy with their meals, and it is a different kind of dining, so perhaps...