Home Taste Restaurant and Bar — Restaurant in North Island

We bought a dinner for 6 on Grabone and chose the more expensive version because it seemed to offer better choices. Huge mistake because of the very poor quality of the food. All of the different ‘appetisers’ were deep fried and virtually indistinguishable from each other. Just bits of mystery meat in fried batter and all were accompanied by the same neon orange sweet/sour sauce. The second course was a nondescript chicken and corn soup, although there was almost no chicken or corn in it, just lots of spun egg. We didn’t fare better with the mains. The first three main dishes were drowning in overpowering and gloopy sweet and sour, lemon and orange sauces and the meat was fatty, gristly and of course, deep fried. The server then forgot the next three dishes and there was a 20 minute space before we reminded them. The three noodle dishes that finally arrived were so greasy and had almost no meat or vegetables in them. What was so frustrating was that as we picked through what we were served we saw other dishes being served to other customers that actually looked good - colourful, full of vegetables and interestingly presented. Obviously ordered from the regular menu. If the whole idea of Grabone is to introduce new customers to your establishment, serving them such abysmal food is not...

My partner and I have visited Home Taste several times in the past and have generally had good experiences (reliably tasty yum cha + Chinese fare), but our most recent visit left a very bad taste in our mouths... figuratively and literally.

Service was friendly and attentive, but the food that followed was not great. When I bit into our first dish (the BBQ pork pastry), it had a bitter, pungent taste, and the filling was a dark brown (for context it should be bright red). We tried another one, and same thing – very likely an expired batch. We flagged down the server, and they replaced it, but at no point did they offer a discount or any kind of acknowledgment that, hey, they served us spoiled food.

Unfortunately, the rest of the meal didn’t make up for that initial mishap. The Singapore noodles were bland, and the XLB (soup dumplings) tasted like they had been reheated – tough, gummy skin with barely any soup inside. Everything else? Mediocre at best. While it’s possible that the main chef was away, consistency is key in a restaurant, and this visit definitely missed the mark.

Given our previous positive experiences, I’m giving Home Taste two stars but unfortunately, we won’t be returning or recommending...

I really wanted to give this a better score.

The staff were friendly, quick to help and offered suggestions on what is good value or popular here.

The starters arrived one by one and were probably the best part of our whole meal.

The mains were kind of slow to come out, even though the restaurant didn't seem especially busy but that's not really a big issue for me.

The dishes we ordered were drenched in sauce of such strong flavours, I know some people might like this but it is not what I expected nor what I enjoy. It would have helped if there was some rice (ordered separately) to soak up the sauce.

However, they had suggested for us to order rice which we agreed was a good idea but then they forgot to bring us any. Along with forgetting one of the drinks we asked for partway through the meal.

In all fairness, this has not put me off dining here. The staff were genuine and caring so I will definitely be making another visit and hoping to update this review with a more...