Kika — Restaurant in South Island

Called ahead to ask if children are welcome. Lady said “yep no problem, we can do a fried chicken and potatoes for kids”. Sweet. So we show up for the 5-course tasting menu dinner - myself and partner with our nicely dressed well behaved 3.5 year old daughter. Waiter says “chicken and potatoes for this wee one yes?” We said yes. He asked “any vegetables for her? Broccoli?” We said sure if you can add some broccoli to the kids plate that would be great. Wee while later a huge plate of very gourmet-looking potatoes comes and we assume this is our starter? A few minutes later a gigantic broccoli dish (covered in gourmet toppings) and bowl of highly spiced fried chicken arrived. We call the waiter and say “hold on is this for the kid??” We also spoke with another staff member. They both say “yes this is what you ordered”. Our minds were boggled. This was about 10x more food than a small child could ever eat, and very highly flavoured gourmet stuff that no child in history would ever eat. We asked them to clarify and they said yes that is the only option that children can eat at this restaurant - you have to order the fried chicken starter and the broccoli and potato side dishes. They cannot make a small plate for a child and charge some decent amount for it. So we paid $50 to feed our daughter (on top of about $260 for the 2 of us). Never heard of $50 being the price for a kids dinner. To say kids are welcome and then assume we are happy to have 3 massive (and un child friendly at that) dishes arrive is ludicrous. Obviously my partner and I couldn’t eat all that food on top of our 5 course, so we had to pack a huge doggie bag. Photo shows the 3 plates they set down in front of the 3 year old as if that was an appropriate dinner for her, and just gave vacant stares when we asked questions. Our 5-course was lovely but the kid thing was an absolute joke. Maybe put a sign on the door saying “no kids allowed” or tell me on the phone to bring my own food for the kid, because that was completely and...

Bit of a difficult review to write as my experience is quite mixed. I think it's best to describe Kika as a place that pretends to be a fine-dining restaurants but isn't really, or better said: isn't really yet. It has a lot of potential but there were a few too many misses that make me give it a three star rating.

First of all, service was friendly, and I enjoyed a nice and well prepared and presented meal. Our table went for the "feed me" menu, which basically entails the chef preparing the best (s)he has to offer for that night. We received 3 starters, a main with 2 sides, and a dessert. We also chose to have the wine pairing menu alongside our meal.

I feel that if you order a menu like this, you expect to be surprised and to get the most exclusive stuff that's on the menu (which should be the case when you look at the price you pay for that menu). The starters were nice, although one was basically a corn on the hob put on a stick. The main was pork belly with fried potatoes and a salad (some crunchy lettuce with grapefruit). I was rather disappointed by this. The taste was good, but it wasn't very creative and I felt a bit let down as to me it didn't feel like the best the chef had to offer (at least, I hope so as it was tasty but mediocre). Likewise, the wines for the wine pairing were nice but came either long before we were served the accompanying dish or when we had already started. It also didn't come with much description of what we're drinking. The aperitif was presented to us as "this is a glass of bubbly wine".

I was quite disappointed by the above. It's not what you expect with a "feed me" menu and with paying that price. Perhaps you're better off ordering a la carte at this place.

That said, I do think the establishment has a lot of potential. But it does not to work on a number of things to become a proper fine-dining restaurant, at least how...

A sad experience for us, having really enjoyed dining at Kika five times over the last three years; things have changed.

The major disappointment was finding that a 'Just Feed Me' menu was foisted on us when a late addition took us to 8 diners (a number for whom we have previously been able to dine at Kika a la carte).

This is clearly a means of foisting the least popular dishes on diners and to add insult the number of dishes was excessive. After some negotiation we managed to have the two under 16 year olds excluded but we still had food left over.

The left over food related not just to quantity, but to being sent out the dishes that we would not have ordered ourselves (with the exception of the lamb shoulder). The food quality remains high, but this is certainly not fine dining. While the wine list at Kika remains reasonable good, as we had no idea what we were being served, we did not order any bottles of wine.

There was also surprising inflexibility with regards booking time especially considering that the restaurant was half empty from around 8pm - something I've never seen before at Kika during school holidays. The previous roaring fire has been replaced with candles - I couldn't tell if they were real or electric.

It seems a shame to have to bring it up but the service, while superficially pleasant, left a sour taste with the number of times staff were seen by various members of our party pulling faces, rolling eyes, and whispering to each other about us. The maitre d' was very professional and offered a genuine apology for some confusion when a dish wasn't brought out. He also commented on the inexperience of his serving staff.

I hope things improve quickly because it is hard to see Kika maintaining its previous reputation if it...