Podium — Restaurant in South Island

Unfortunately we did not have a great experience here my partner ended up leaving the place starving for multiple reasons. The atmosphere was not bad, quiet and presentable, I ordered an alcoholic beverage and the waitress refused to serve me alcohol because my partner did not have her ID with her. She does not drink alcohol nor ordered any alcoholic beverages yet they refused to serve me any drinks even though I had my ID. The waitress explained to me that is there policy....I've been dining in Queenstown for many years and this is the first restaurant to mention such ludicrous policies. The starter was lovely and that's about the only good experience we had tonight. We both ordered salmon mains. Both of our mains were raw the Salmon was completely raw in the center, the rice was undercooked and very crunchy....we did not get charged for one of the mains since I ate half of mine. My partner had two bites and had to leave since they could not cater to Celiac which is understandable we did not expect the kitchen staff to cater to our needs. But at least if you are charging 45 for a main at least cook the meal... the staff offered to cook another main for us which was good service from the team but we decided to leave instead....overall very disappointed as we have been here a few years ago and had a lovely experience and they served me a beverage without asking for my partner's ID. It's obvious some management changes have been made thus the standards have fallen with it...lots of potential just not...

Need to go to the Sudima hotel. Lots of free parking in the area.

We went to Podium for New Year Eve dinner. It was busy and looked like they were understaffed, so it took 30 min to order our main meals as staff didn’t come to us.

I ordered a glass of white wine. When I got it, the smell was awful, so it was clearly off. We complained about that and the staff smelled it. She said the smell is okay for her, but she would replace it for me. But she didn’t come back with a new glass of wine for another 20 min. She came back with our main meals instead. She looked like forgot about my wine. We complained about it again, so finally I got a fresh wine but it took 40 min to get a glass of wine before my meal. The new wine smell was fine, so previous wine was definitely off.

We ordered a beer and Coke Zero, but it never came again, so we made another complaint to another staff member. We could understand the slow service because of understaffed and being busy. But it was very frustrating to have to repeat our orders, especially we had some issues with drinks.

The food (lamb, pan fried market fish and fries) was quite salty for us, but overall tasty.

Due to certain issues, we are not sure if we would like to go back and recommend this...

I've updated my review after reflection and being home a month. I've changed my rating from one to two stars. We spent a month in NZ, and our meal was unfortunately disappointing. Calamari was over breaded and overcooked, very dry and not flavourful. My wife had gluten free margarita pizza, and although gluten free crusts vary in quality, this one was definitely not great. My main was a shrimp and chorizo pasta, I was hoping for bursting flavours but it was much blander than I was expecting. I was hoping for a zing of garlic and spices. However, on the positive side it looked great. I did notice in our travels in NZ that garlic and spices are not used to the same degree as I am used to, so part of my disappointment might just be that I am used to much zestier sauces. I might have been much safer going with the burger or fish and chips, people at the table near me ordered these and they did look good. The atmosphere in the restaurant...