Spirit House Dunedin — Restaurant in South Island

I made a booking online and was informed that I would have 1 hour and 20 minutes for dinner. That's fine, but if you restrict people to a small time period then you better make sure that you take the order quickly and serve the food in a reasonable time. Neither of those things happened. Sure, it was busy, but that's not my problem. After drinks and entrees, both delivered late, the mains eventually arrived and within 10 minutes my table was informed that we had to vacate the table for another booking. I said that wasn't going to happen and asked to see the manager. The manager came out and instead of asking what the problem was immediately went on the attack and told us we had to leave. She even suggested that she would bring out some containers so we could pack up the food. I had to laugh. I told her she had two options. The first was to pay for the whole meal including drinks (about $220), and we would pack everything in containers and leave in 10 minutes. The second was to not bother us for no less than 30 more minutes. She left and left us alone, but obviously to have had that experience tarnished the dining experience. I then heard them trying to pull that same nonsense on a nearby table, and their reaction was similar in that they complained they should have gotten the food out faster. I went over to that table and, in front of the manager who was telling them they had to leave, told the folks at the table that they (the manager) had tried to pull the same nonsense on me and we weren't leaving. In the end they didn't leave either. What horrible service. I made the restaurant pay for all my drinks for what they did. I will never return...

If you want authentic beautifully made Asian Food? This is NOT the place to go. Definitely recommend going to the South Dunners Satay House, Takeichi, Saigon Van, Futomaki, or Chilli Dhaba.

The service was mediocre. One of our dinner party members had to get their own cutlery and plate at the server station, instead of having the table set for our reservation of 7. We had to repeatedly grab our own water pitchers from the bar because the staff did not check in with us for refills, they only checked in once the food was ready.

The food was nothing to write home about. The Vietnamese Crispy Spring Rolls were tough, tasted stale, and there wasn't a lot of filling in them either.

For our mains, one of us ordered a the Lamb Shanks in the Curry Sauce. They wanted it not too spicy, but they received an awfully spicy dish that looked like slop. It was so bad that they had to order something else.

I ordered the Spicy Vietnamese Fried Noodle with Basil. It was advertised with fresh chili not chili oil/sauce, and you couldn't even taste the basil. It was just spice and not pleasurable to eat.

In a nutshell, no one in our group was happy about our food, and especially that it was all overpriced!

They may have the view, but the food will always be 1/5 stars. Will never come...

So the restaurant got us in. We sat at the bar and then they moved us to a table. We ordered the food when we were at the bar. We sat down at a table. We were at our table for 45 minutes before we started asking. They said 15 more minutes on our food so we waited almost an hour for our food to come out. When the food came out it was good. She had the fried fish. The flavor was immensely good. It was a stir fry underneath the fish. I had the beef rendang explosion of flavor. The meat was extremely tender. It just melted in your mouth. Indonesian dish. Made it just perfect with white rice. We love the food. I would definitely need to hear just for the food. The services are horrible. They can easily understand what you're saying when you're taking the order, but when it comes to asking about when our food is, they don't understand. No discount for an hour. Waiting for our food. For the service I wouldn't recommend this place at all but for the food I hopefully when it's not busy maybe it's a little quicker but definitely disorganized people working. The setting on the ocean is pretty. The checkered mesh is a little overdone on...