Moana Cafe & Bar — Restaurant in North Island

Yeah, I’m really not one to leave a bad review but here we are today. TLDR complicated from the beginning waited well over an hour

Vibe seemed nice, very pretty, very light and not too many people.

Sitting at the table waiting to order, twiddling thumbs. Eventually we go up and are to told someone will be with us soon. Someone is with us soon, to tell us to come to the counter to order.

Okay fine whatever. To the counter we go. It is now when we were warned of a half an hour wait but that’s about the usual so we figured we’d try. Mistake made.

Our orders were 5 sandwiches, nothing tricky. Looking around the restaurant there is a distinct lack of food on other patrons tables. Hmm we think. No food is seen for another 20 minutes when the first table near us gets served. They’ve got kids and seem to have been waiting for a long time.

Slowly more food comes out but the time is ticking, 30,40,50 minutes when one of us goes to ask where our food is. We’re told it’s on the way, it gets brought to our table, ITS NOT OUR FOOD.

A man nearby goes to ask and finally over 1 hour later, our five sandwiches appear. They are as pictured. I’m normally not so picky, but does that bread look like sourdough to you? The “mango salsa” was 3 slices of mango plopped on the bread. An HOUR for not what we ordered. In fairness, the chips were decent and the aioli was fine.

The waitress attitude appalling too, why was this so hard?

Not worth it, only 5 stars go to the table beside us and the bond we formed, waiting...

I would give this place a 0 if possible as the staff here, especially the young blond woman, are extremely rude and have no understanding of how to offer customer service. We walked in and there wasn't anyone in the front to welcome us or take us to a table. As a result, we walked over to a free table without a 'reserved' sign and sat down. The blond waitress came over angrily and said that we can't sit there as we haven't booked and that the table was reserved. I explained that there were no signs on it like the other tables and she rudely replied that there are menu's on it so we should have known. I have not worked in a cafe before and do not know that a menu on the table means reserved. She then complained that we didn't speak to anyone first and walked away. Straight away, my partner and I decided to go elsewhere due to the poor customer service. As we were walking out, we heard her loudly backchatting with a colleague about us. If we were told nicely to move, we would have but the woman was unnecessarily rude. I can't even comment on the food as we didn't make it that far but I definitely won't ever be going back there again. Chocolate Dayz Cafe is a much...

I visited the Sea Salt Café last week with a friend and we both had the whitebait for our lunch.

I had the whitebait fritter as a main mean, and my friend had the entree size meal.

I was not at all impressed with my meal purely as a consequence of the amount of balsamic vinegar that was poured over the salad which commenced to run all over the plate into the fritter as I commenced eating.

The presentation of the meal when it arrived was great, and the amount of balsamic only became evident as I started to eat and cut into the fritter.

There was plenty of whitebait in the fritter so that was not a problem, but the amount of balsamic was just poor, and it consequently spoilt what would have been a great meal.

Very dissappointing.

My friends meal was great.

The atmosphere here is excellent, looking out to sea, with the sun shining on the water.

When I return to Wellington again I would like to try another meal at this café, and hopefully my experience...