ELEMENTS — Restaurant in South Island

This place was let down by plain and simple customer service. I made an email booking. On arrival, the person clearly had no idea. I said twice I had a booking, she said did I want to make a booking. Then when she finally got it. She asked for my room number. I said I didnt have a room number, this sent her into some panic, as she left me standing at the reception desk and went and asked someone cleaning the tables - who also had no idea what to do. Then a smartly dressed female who had obviously taken my email booking came. However it was like they hadnt taken the time to reserve me a table. Saying they were busy and pointing to a table over by the window which still had food items on it. They didnt take me to the table. Just pointed again when I asked which table. So welcome to Elements. The food was ok. Asian fair section - eek dried up stuck together noodles. The other food offerings were ok from what I chose. Some items were not replaced once exhausted - danish pastries. For full paying guests 35$ the service is appaulling. Tables around me took 20 minutes to be cleared. I was looking forward to a buffet breakfast to start my day in Queenstown. This was not the start I wanted. Voucher was used...

Twice in the last 6 months we have dined here and twice been letdown, mostly by the service. On this occasion we were dining with our 1year old son, his meal was forgotten when sending the order through to the kitchen so we had all finished our meals by the time his arrived. We wanted a second round of drinks and had to go up to the counter to order as we couldn't find any staff in the dining room to ask. As our son was beyond tired he didn't want to eat his meal so we asked for a takeaway container but the staff member didn't understand what we were asking for so we had to wait even longer for another staff member to come out just to ask, they then struggled to find a container but eventually came out with something suitable. Food was great, very expensive but delicious and well cooked but sadly ruined by...

We are staying at the Novotel and as Accor Gold members decided to dine at Elements. What a mistake!! We ordered the strip loin steaks, after all it is pretty hard to go wrong with a steak in New Zealand right? or so we thought! Wrong!!! The steaks were so incredibly tough, gristly and full of sinew that you could hardly get your knife through them. When we asked for more sauce to try to “soften” the tough meat we were told we would be charged! Couldn’t believe it. Left hungry after just eating the chips on the plate we ordered two very average desserts and the restaurant charged us for everything, no compensation for what was the worst meal we have ever had. Will never come again and unlikely to ever stay at this Novotel again. Not sure how they could get a simple...