Mudbrick Vineyard and Restaurant — Restaurant in Waiheke

This was such a disappointing experience especially as I decided to book a table to celebrate my birthday with friends on the 26th October 2019. The location was beautiful. Although the views and location were breathtaking, the service was extremely especially for a vineyard & the prices. On arrival, we went into the wrong restaurant (Bistro) but their FOH were lovely & advised my booking was in the other restaurant further down. When we made our way to the counter/FOH of Mudbrick, there was no service whatsoever. No one was front of house to serve me & my friends. After several minutes have passed by, I assume it was a manager (wearing a navy shirt with no name tag/did not mention who he was) finally came to the counter. I told him I had a booking at 1:30pm for seven & his response was "you don't have a booking" while moving the mouse on the screen not even looking properly at the reservations. I mentioned the other FOH at Bistro saw my booking & advised it was here. He still proceeded to say "I don't see a booking for you, there is no booking". I mentioned I had received the booking confirmation & confirmed my booking, I can show you that. He wasn't impressed that we were holding up other guests as they arrived which made me not impressed at all as it seemed like they were racist. I proceeded to show him my booking & he grabs the menus & said follow me to your table with no apology whatsoever for his unprofessional service. We were advised that there was an event at 4pm & had to leave by/before then. We asked the same FOH person for some water three times & still no water. Waited over several minutes to be served to have our orders taken as each waitress/waiters/managers just walked by & did not acknowledge us whatsoever. We were served some bread and spread/olive oil in the meantime. The waiters/waitresses came & served us a spoonful of duck I believe it was before we were served our entrees (we ordered the pork belly & hauraki), I asked a waitress for some water for the table & she kindly bought some over. To cleanse the palate cleanser, we were served some sorbet after our entrees. The time was ticking & we still had no sight of our mains. It took over 50 minutes (3:10pm) until we were served our main dishes (sirloin & venison) with our sides (truffle mash & fries). I feel like as a fine dining restaurant, their service needs to seriously improve. It was definitely the most disappointing lunch I have had & especially at a place like this. The money & time was...

Our party was utterly shocked at how far this once excellent restaurant has fallen. We dined on the 7 course degustation menu, and were (definitely not) lost for words.

Firstly, the service on arrival was appalling. Cocktails were delivered with a lack of care we haven’t seen before. One of us ordered a drink three times before results were seen, others were delivered at dramatically different intervals despite being the same drink?

Our server delivered bread, butter and hummus, which we began to enjoy before horrifyingly realising this was the first course and was Listed On The Menu. Bread.

After this, two snacks arrived. A venison taco and a clam crisp. Both were cloyingly, sickeningly sweet. These were both snacks, nothing more than a mouthful, yet again were listed as a course on the menu.

Third, an ajo blanco, lacking any flavour in the ajo Blanco itself, but otherwise palatable.

A yellowtail carpaccio followed. This was the highlight yet suffered unacceptable variation around the table. Three were sliced extremely thickly while the other two were wafer-thin. One was missing an entire element.

Another fish followed. This, unlike all prior courses which could have done without introduction, was never clarified by the server, despite being listed as “catch of the day”. We suspected Hapuka and the cooking was excellent, despite being a dish straight out of the 70s.

Next a palate cleanser, kawakawa sorbet. This jarred quite strongly with the hapuka and the following lamb loin, as though it was a leftover from another menu.

The lamb dish that followed we had all seen countless times, yet was introduced as “the beef”. A loin, cauliflower and a jus. Another dish from any restaurant in NZ, that could’ve done it far better. One was well overdone and shouldn’t have been sent out.

This left us with the prospect of dessert. Cherries and chocolate. At this point we were all expecting nothing more. Chocolate sticks, half a cherry and some mousse…on a degustation menu.

Almost going without mention after the above is the inattentive service and sloppy plating. What doesn’t go without mention was the pool of piss in the corner of the restroom, that every single dish was garnished with a fennel frond, the percentage of the menu either sugar or a sorbet and, most horrifically, the amount of literal dying mice writhing on the pavement as we exited.

So bad was this evening we only wished they were there as we were arriving so that we would have...

It started with a very uninterested staff helping us with the wine tasting who was always on his phone. While we were drinking the Chardonnay in the rooftop bar, a staff approached us to say that we were not allowed to drink there so we need to move downstairs, we looked around and there is a few people drinking including 'that' staff...anyway we just moved to the garden near the bistro like we were told. Then a customer drinking in the rooftop came to us and asked why we were the only group asked to move and he said "it is weird cause you are the only Chinese in the rooftop, the rest are whites", we said we're also confused but acted like we're okay with it because we did not want to make a scene. (We're NOT even Chinese lol). When we finally settled in the bistro, 2 staff assumed that we bought the wine in the cellar for retail price just because "IT DOES NOT LOOK CHILLED" and we're like CHILL girl, look at the weather, it is a nice burning hot summer day, and we were in the rooftop for a while! AND how else would we get the wine glasses that we had if we only bought the wine "TO GO?". It was disheartening as I tried to compare my experience with my white colleagues (we always come here for our Christmas party) vs with my Asian friends.

We are ONLY giving our 5 STAR service review to CALLUM, who was nice enough to ask about our experience, that allowed us to vent out our frustration and he explained the confusion between the Bistro, restaurant and the cellar that started to sell wine to 'have there' and not just for retail. We honestly felt like we were targeted for a while but Thanks to Callum who made our experience better! - we even ordered more cheese platters and wine because of his hospitality skills! We still think that the management can do better with their communication between the cellar and...