Del Mar Restaurant - Oamaru — Restaurant in South Island

As an Oamaru local, I was excited to try Del Mar, the new restaurant in town. My family and I booked in to celebrate my Dad's birthday on a Sunday afternoon. The place was pretty busy, so we waited a while for our orders to be taken, meanwhile the roof continued to drip water on my Mums shoulder, she obviously moved after this. It then took an hour for our food to come out. My Dad and I both ordered the steak, mine medium and my Dads medium-rare. I asked for either gravey or garlic butter as I don't eat mushrooms, and that was the only option with the steak. They said they'd make the alternatives. When they arrived there was no gravry or butter on mine. I asked about it, they had to go back and check to come back and say they couldn't manage butter or gravey... Anyway, we got stuck into eating our meals, to find our potatoes were rock hard and the steaks well over cooked. Brown all the way through, not how medium steak is to be cooked. No waiter came and checked on our meals or us once, so I went up and mentioned how the meals weren't cooked right. They said sorry and took them back. So my dad and I sat waiting while the rest of the table kept eating, they're meals were ok apart from the over cooked hot chips. A long while later they brought the same pieces of steak and potatoes back. The steaks were still extremely over done. And the potatoes slightly softer but still undercooked. Needless to say, we were disappointed. Especially with the lack of service, we had to keep asking for even a jug of water. I once again told them about the steak etc when I went up to pay and they did nothing but said sorry and charged us. Terrible service and terrible cooking. Will never waste my...

The restaurant has a beautiful view. We have been here in 2018 and it was one of the best fish platters we ever had. I recommended the place to a lot of friends who were visiting Oamarua over the years. Now we got back ourselfs and we were eagerly looking forward to eat there again.

Long story short, we were sadly disappointed. The staff was friendly but the food was not really good anymore:

-The Seafood Paella was horrible. The rice overcooked and the seafood without any flavor. (I eat a lot of seafood and this tasted like frozen one..)

Our kids had burgers. They arrived completely burned. When we said something they remade one, but it arrived completely burned again. (nobody checks quality)

The cocktails were very sour and with no good quality prosecco.

The pizza was below standard, but still the best of all meals

The prices on the website are not up-to-date, everything got more expensive

I'm so sad to see what this place has become, when we were here last, it was hard to get a table.. now it was almost empty on a Saturday evening.

It was also a slap in our face when we payed and they said because "we had some trouble with our burgers" she will give us a discount, as she can't take them off completely. The discount was $4.50 on a $207.- meal...

They really did not understand, that they have a serious kitchen problem and they can't serve customers with such bad quality.

I really hope they get back on track and get their kitchen fixed asap. They have lost us...

Five of us had a really "unique" absolutely atrocious meal there recently. It is quite disappointed the fact when looked at the previous decent reviews and great photos of the signature dish 'hot pot' and seafood paella 🥘. It is used to be really good packed with seafood and not four bloody 🥔 potatoes and no fish and not even a piece of squid 🦑, all mussels were a lot more shells than meat in it and the clams mostly has sand and rock still in the shell, not clean it properly and we had a mouthful of had taste. We would not recommended this place any more and would never come back unless all the dishes issue been addressed. We know in hospitality struggle to survive recent year we are also in this industry knowing cutting costs to this level and present to the customers is never right! Especially, considering the hot pot were $38 and used to be $28 with a lot more better cooked seafood and soup based ingredients that was packed with favour, sadly not anymore, dishes now are significantly more pricey and not getting any better or even close to the taste or favour used to be. It is marked one of the bad, bad would be a understatement I would say from the amount $$ we paid and the dishes we received were beyond unpleasant. The place has a great environment and good enough services we received but the food just ten times worse than homecook!! Period "Thank you very much" for the mouthful...