Piku Izakaya Japanese Restaurant & Cocktail Bar — Restaurant in North Island

Absolutely beautiful food! Unfortunately, only one tiny issue that I am only addressing as it was a chilly night, we had booked in advance and would love for it to not happen again 😅 This was a few weeks ago also. As stated, we had booked in advance and on arrival was told our table still had people sitting and we needed to wait a little bit, which was absolutely fine with all of us! The issue was that we ended up having to wait outside in the cold for over an hour. We started with drinks, and then appetizers, and then ended up ordering our mains in case the table was finally ready, however, food was brought out to us and we were finally offered a table only after we had our mains. Would not stop us from coming back though! As service (waiters/waitresses) and food is absolutely beautiful and I recommend to many people to dine here! This is more to bring attention so it does not continue to happen and you are aware, as I am also a previous hospitality worker so am understanding that it can happen ☺...

For the high price nothing wow'ed. My partner and myself were recommended to order 5 dishes by the brand new 18 year old blond girl who laughed at every question we asked and then followed with 'i don't know'. Obviously the senior and actually professional staff noticed how immature and clueless her and her other friend were that was walking around gormlessly and chose to take over serving. Unfortunately there are far cheaper places in Hawkes Bay that have dishes that would be on the same level and even wow further with tastes and textures. I guess it's made a name by being a hangout of the Ponsonby type Havelock residents. Not worth the $200...

OMG this place literally brought us back to Japan!! We were so lucky to get a table at the bar on a Friday night. The food was sooo amazing, the service was top notch, everything was perfect! The food was generous too. We were worried the portion size of the food would be small thinking that this is a fine dining place, but we were surprised by the portion, especially the skewers, omg you have to try the chicken skewer and the pork belly skewers, they were so juicy, so tasty, so flavoursome, both hubby and I really enjoyed the food. We are only here for a weekend and we are seriously thinking about coming back again...