Fudog — Restaurant in South Island

华人注意：本店的菜不适合中国人口味, 服务也特别差。

Eating here was the worst dining experience I've had since I arrived in New Zealand a week ago, and probably some of the worst Asian fusion food ever.

Let's start with the good before the bad. The bathroom was really nice; they had Aesop hand soap and I enjoyed the rustic exposed pipe aesthetic. Also, our waitress was very sweet, even though she did get our order wrong. I also thought the deep-fried food we ordered was decent.

Now for the bad.

First off the ambience was already off. The writing on the 春联-inspired wall decor is total gibberish when read in either Chinese Hanzi or Japanese Kanji, so maybe that was an omen. Shows a lack of education, respect, and due diligence to the origin cultures and cuisines that inspire them.

Onto the food. We ordered salmon sashimi, crispy fried chicken, fried cauliflower, sesame crusted tofu (substituted in place of the oyster mushrooms since they were out that day), pork belly kushiyaki, eggplant, and wok fried noodles.

The salmon sashimi was doused in sauce, yet somehow incredibly bland. 2.0/5.0

The crispy fried chicken and fried cauliflower were both decent. The cauliflower was basically the vegetarian version of the chicken. Both dishes were fried evenly, and I enjoyed the citrus-y sauce. The kewpie mayo dipping sauce had a full, creamy consistency. The chicken itself was tender, but not as juicy as karaage should be. Each 3.5/5.0

The sesame crusted tofu, however, was really dry and although the seasoning looked flavorful, I could barely taste it. 1.5/5.0

The pork belly kushiyaki was tender, but there literally was no flavor I could taste except salt. It was so freaking salty. 1.0/5.0

Eggplant dish. Never came. Messed up our order and never made it through the kitchen. ?/5.0

This salty theme extended to the wok fried noodles. Sooooo salty— couldn't even taste the other flavors if there were any. The noodles were also overcooked. This one was salty to the point of being inedible and we had to send it back to the kitchen. I read another review that said this dish could give them kidney failure. True! They were sane enough to not charge us for it after we brought it up to them. 0.0/5.0

Not a dish, but even the chili oil on the table was extremely flavorless and useless in adding non-salt flavors to our dishes.

The service we received was also unacceptable. Since it was a tapas style meal and we were ordering quite many dishes, I wrote down our exact order on my iPhone notes app and showed the note to our waitress to be as clear as possible. Somehow our eggplant dish still got lost in the process.

The food also came in way too slow. At least 5 minutes between each dish, and each dish came in pretty much sequentially until the fried noodles and pork belly came together at the end. Additionally, they almost gave someone else's order to us. We did not order dumplings and two orders of them were brought to our table. Furthermore, their payment terminal asked us to tip? Seriously? In New Zealand? After all that?

From what I’ve gathered, the owner and most of the kitchen and service staff are not of East Asian descent. I'm not against people of different backgrounds cooking and serving Chinese(-inspired) cuisine, but my Chinese taste buds and my Chinese heritage came out of this particular experience feeling thoroughly disrespected.

As an establishment that uses the fu lion dog 石狮 as your logo and namesake,...

This is probably the first Asian restaurant I ve been to where the chef, kitchen hand and waitress were all non Asian. This made it more curious on what the food would be like. The service and the atmosphere were better than most Asian restaurants, the waitress was very polite, friendly and quick to serve the customers. Wanted to order a Korean tofu dish, but from reading the description and ingredients used, I was certain it wasn't any authentic Korean dish. From reading other peoples review, decided to order 'Mongolian beef' ($40) and 'Mushroom Udon' ($15). The 'mushroom udon' wasnt the typical udon as it wasn't served with a broth. The noodles were fried instead and hence yaki-udon which wasn't mentioned in the menu. Never tried 'Mongolian beef' before and resembled a spicy Chinese dish with a few quirks in ingredients that made it fancy. Both dishes were presented very nicely, however they were both far too salty. I am not sure whether this was bad luck on us as other review have rated the food excellent, but I would have said it was unedible if I didn't order a bowl of rice ($6) due to the saltiness but were still unable to finish both the dish. This was the first restaurant in my lifetime (34 years) in NZ that I wasn't able to finish a dish due to saltiness. The restaurant concept of being a western centric Asian fusion was interesting and intriguing, however it was a shame the dish we ordered was lacking any deep Asian taste, and more of a bombardment of salt and soy sauce. Curious to try other dishes, but the prices aren't exactly considered cheap. Then again, most restaurants in Wanaka aren't exactly cheap either. Cant say it was worth for its price tag. Giving a 2.5 star ⭐⭐✨ due to...

thoroughly disappointing...... Great welcome, but thats where it stoped. waitstaff zero product knowledge..... Customer:"does the food come out asian style" "or do we order entree main"? Waitress(condescendingly) "entree/main of course" Customer "ok, thanks" 20 minutes later 3 very average bowls of pickles arrive. 20 minutes later 4 very nice dumplings arrive 10 minutes later 6 pieces of soggy unseasoned nasty eggplant arrive 15 minutes lates some over cooked, under seasoned green veggies arrive 10 minutes later something that can only be described as sachet food arrived definitely the worst thing we ate, brisket which was 2 hours short of braised, rock hard inedible glossy gluggy salty possibly the worst $30 dish i ever ate, and thats a big call. Waitstaff never checked on us, very long waits, didn't get offered a drink, so we drank water, and we paid $100 for the privilege. Usually give every new establishment at least 2 cracks at the whip, i won't be back for a while.....seems like the new cool place to be....however was about aesthetically pleasing as a sports hall to boot, if i could give it zero i would..... must have had a duff meal as some of these other reviews are...