Oppies Restaurant & Takeaway — Restaurant in North Island

Clean and spacious takeaway store, but that's about it. I came through on a Thursday night, not very busy. I ordered a chicken fried rice and a beef burger combo. Chicken fried rice was quite bland, almost any chicken fried rice you could find at any takeaway store around the country. Nothing special. I love the way the chicken pieces were strategically placed on top of the rice, so you could see through the container and assume there were a lot of pieces. Prepare to be disappointed. But what really surprised me was the beef burger - the patty was deep fried.. very weird texture and the patty looked like it came from a 10 pack patty box from the supermarket. Not that great. I initially came here for the fries which I was looking forward to.. definitely not the best fries in NZ, at least not anymore. Couldn't get any more average fries than that I had from here. Overall, food was average. No wow factor or anything that made me want to return. Next, customer service. Excellent. Great customer service from front line. Cant say much about the manager or owner (who was wearing the #1 Fries in NZ shirt). I had asked to purchase a tomato sauce tin, which the sign had said $2.50. Problem was I was charged $3, I asked for a refund and the manager/owner came out demanding that it is actually $4 for a tin. Cashier eventually gave it for $2.50 (i know the law about prices that are mistakenly advertised). About 2mins later the manager/owner replaced the sign that said $2.50 to a whopping $8 per tin. Whoa. You go Mr. Oppie. Anyway, just wanted to put in a review that the food was really quite average and does not reflect the hype that I anticipated. But again, no "best fries" awards handed out to Oppies since 2013 so maybe I shouldn't have expected...

Update 13 September 2025 -on our way back to Auckland we decided to revisit this restaurant as we wanted to try their lobster porridge. Turned we were very pleased to make a stop there. We chose a medium sized lobster for the porridge, had claypot cooked eel and fried cabbage with their homemade sausage and wax meat. The lobster was served two ways. The head, tail etc were used to cook porridge and the rest fried to perfection. It was the meatiest lobster I’ve ever eaten. The porridge was sweet and tasty. The eel was cooked using a heated clay pot so no overcooking was done. It was delicious and the meat fresh and firm. The cabbage was fresh and sweet but their homemade Chinese sausage and fat meat were so yummy that we bought some to bring home. 😋😋😋

When i walk into a restaurant that claimed that it serves the best fish & chips I wouldn’t expect to find a mix of western & Chinese seafood. That’s the first surprise. The staff spoke Cantonese to us and straight away I expected good Chinese seafood. There are actually two menus - one for western seafood and the other for Chinese seafood. So we ordered Chinese and they were really good. We had the stir fried chye sum, steamed tuskfish, mapo tofu, half hakka chicken which is like the salt baked chicken. The last surprise is the fish slices and lamb soup which is surprisingly yummy. We love all dishes especially the soup (a really tasty surprise) and the steamed tuskfish (which tasted better than what we had elsewhere) The lunch is so good we’re planning to return before...

We visited Oppie recently after seeing all the good reviews, thinking it would be great — but we were really disappointed. We were really looking forward to trying classic NZ fish and chips, but honestly, it wasn’t great or even good — it was pretty bad.

The chicken burger was okay — not bad, but definitely not the best burger ever. The chips were as white as the paper they were served on and undercooked. The potato cakes (“scallops”) were oily on the outside, dry in the middle, and like mashed potato on the inside. The fish was fresh, but not much better than Birds Eye fish from the supermarket.

We initially sat down but realised table service is only for platters, so we ended up getting takeaway instead. The male staff member at the counter seemed frustrated (rolled his eyes) when we weren’t sure what to order and needed a minute, but thankfully a kind local realised we weren’t from New Zealand (he could tell we were from Australia) and helped explain how it worked.

We’ve been pretty happy with the quality of food in NZ so far, so this was a real letdown. Our food took a while to come out and was half cold when we got it. My mum, who doesn’t even like McDonald’s, said she’d rather have gone there just to get something to eat.

If you’re looking to try NZ fish and chips, I’d give this...