J's Restaurant & Takeaways Rotorua — Restaurant in North Island

Ate in (there are two tables and a couch). To us, “flounder” $14 NZ was the best, very nicely prepared small whole flounder (bones, skin and all) with fairly light but nice batter. Yummy. Tarakihi (unfamiliar to us Americans) was also very good. Fries… ooh sorry chips… were also good. The “squid rings” are disappointing, it’s a processed squid (hopefully) wherein an entire squid and fillers are ground up and reformed into a ring rather than simply slicing a piece of squid thereby having something good, these were same way Burger King does “onion rings”. So squid rings were just okay, you can buy a frozen bag of these things and each would be 10 cents vs. $1.50 NZ here. Oh well no surprise. We tried one sausage and as we kind of expected, it was not good but edible and filling, a bit gross, goodness only knows what it is made from, hopefully mostly grain, believe Germans would be incredulous calling such a thing a sausage. I would call it a sausage shaped cereal cake in a casing with only a trace of garbage “meat”. Our order was aptly taken by a polite ~10 year old (it was Saturday) young workers are something we don’t see elsewhere. His Dad (?) yelled at him a bit when the nice kid was baffled when we asked whether they had coffee, to us demonstrating why kids should be having fun on Saturday vs working in an adult role. The place smells of fish but they did keep the door open so not too bad. We came here hoping for great fish and chips and we were happy with the fish and chips, and the price was okay....

Highly Recommend! A true hidden Gem found while passing through Rotorua on our travels. We spontaneously found this spot while trying to find a warm soup and indeed we found it! The food is outstanding, I recommend you eat on site on the provided tables to enjoy the food as fresh as it comes. Ordered the beef brisket noodle soup, fish burger and chips. The chips are so good! Crispy and Fluffy on the inside and the fish burger super soft and the fish itself was a huge portion with a Crispy thin batter delish! The star of the show however was the Beef Brisket Noodle Soup, wow! Make sure you order this the broth is so flavourful, meat is tender and noodles excellent bite. The meal was one of the best we have had in rotorua and as was the awesome service we got from the family behind the counter. Couldn't recommend...

Thought id try this place after seeing the reviews as I usually go to Devons and te ngae fish shop overall nice food but not the my favourite place to go to

Best raw fish $12 in town kara cream spring onion fish is raw not cooked from lemon and flavour was spot on not overpowered does need more tomato but nice amount of fish in there too

Got the deep fried flounder fish was cooked to perfection but too much batter for my liking Mussels and chips were nice and crispy Kinas oysters fresh but probly the dearest in town for same size tub everywhere else

Deep fried chicken is plain battered was tender and freshly cooked but too much...