Miha Restaurant at Grand Mercure Puka Park Resort — Restaurant in Waikato

I was given a $100 meal voucher as a birthday gift to use at this restaurant. I pre-booked for 8pm and when we arrived we sat in the restaurant bar. All beautiful and elegant. We were then seated a little after 8 in front of open doors looking out to a lovely view and in normal circumstances that would have been great but it was windy and wet that night so I was pretty cold. However, the place was full and as it wasn't freezing so we just stayed where we were. We were asked if we wanted sparkling or still water and chose sparkling. 20 minutes later still no water. We alerted a waitress and she comes back with the water and our menus. I order the seafood laksa soup for starters and a main of lamb curry. We also order 3 sides..wok veges, duck-fried potatoes and chips and aioli. We also ordered 2 basic cocktails. Cocktails arrive and a little while later my soup arrives which is pretty tasteless and has chewy bland stuff in it which I assume is calamari and the only seafood I could find. I love pepper which I would never put on a laksa but I had to have something to give it a taste. Anyway I finish my soup..and we wait.The person with me hadn't had anything to eat since arrival and after another 1/2 hour of other people being served I waved down a waitress again. It was past 9pm by then..and we had arrived at 8. Other patrons had just about finished their meal and they had arrived after us. Seems there was a miscommunication in the kitchen and our meal hadn't been cooked. So we waited again and out it came. Now the 3 side orders were fine,no problem. My meal however was awful The rolled pappadom was slightly burnt on the bottom.The rice which was in a mound and the roti were ok. The curry was in a tall sort of saucepan. When I looked into the saucepan the curry had separated and there was about 1/4 of the pot full of oil with the curry underneath. I thought maybe this was deliberate so I stirred up the curry from the bottom but as soon as it rested it would split again. So I poured it out over the rice hoping it would blend. Nope, oil seeped into the corner of the plate. The curry itself tasted as if it had just been cooked with a store-bought curry powder. I was really hungry when they bought it out..so I ate just over half of it before I decided to leave it. I then asked if they could tell me if I'd used up the all of the gift voucher and it turned out we had $6 left. So I ordered the Tiramasu for dessert. By this time it was almost 9:45 and they closed at 10. I waited and waited and no pudding arrived. So I flagged down another waitress.and said we'd been waiting for ages and no dessert. Another waitress comes back and says oh sorry the Tiramasu has finished. What other dessert would you like? By this time I just wanted to get that $6 off the voucher and run like hell so I said "I'll have the carrot pudding. Honestly, there was so little another choice..I remember she offered a chocolate brownie or chocolate chip ice cream. So I chose the pudding which I didn't really enjoy. I just wanted to get out of that place as soon as. We ended up being the last ones out of the place and you could see the waitresses just wanted to go home too Now the only thing I can't remember.. was the timing of when the manager came over. It was after the dinner but pretty sure it was before I got the pudding. He was all apologetic and said he was sorry for spoiling my birthday. He said he took the blame and gave us a bottle of wine..made all the hoopla over giving me this exotic specially made for me cocktail, and only charged us up to the amount of the voucher. Everything else was free..which would have only amounted to half the pudding. This was an attempt at making amends and needs to be mentioned but all and all.. it was very disappointing ..and although we received an apology, a bottle of wine and a fancy cocktail basically the birthday treat was ruined. Unfortunately my phone was low on power so the only pics I took were at the end of the curry meal but you can still see the oil seeping into...

I have just read my review from 2018 and the title was 'Very Good But Does Lack Some Consistency' and I would say that just about sums up this experience again. I know we have just come out of 2 years of lock downs and that hospitality venues are struggling to employ enough experienced staff and so this certainly does effect the overall quality of a place. We had a number of meals this trip and so I had the opportunity for the restaurant to try and put things right and they did. A couple of problems we had over the time involved the second cooked breakfast of our stay which was a repeat of day one, arrived with slices of chorizo all burned to a crisp on one side. It was burned black. But the person who plated it, instead of binning it and starting again, just turned the pieces over so the good side was up. Did they not realise that one fork full made me turn it over and to my horror every piece was laden with carcinogenic burnt chorizo. The chef happened to walk past at this time and it was a great opportunity to talk to him about this. He was very apologetic (he had not done nor seen this) and he really could not believe this left the kitchen looking like this. We had a quite a conversation about the continental breakfast which is still very plain and lacks anything special or nice. It has the feel of everything brought in and cans and bottles opened for fruit, juice etc. No effort at all which included the lack of decent coffee machine to make a coffee with when a espresso type machine coffee is included in the price. they just don't have a machine to do this apart from a long or short black. I thought this maybe an advance on their own barista coffee which despite the staff just finishing some training on the art, the coffee was not very good or consistent at all. No matter who you order one from, it should be all the same, tasty, hot and with some body. Unfortunately it wasn't. By the time we finished our holiday, the restaurant had introduced bircher muesli for breakfast, so they are listening and at least trying. Even the wait staff had a little spring in their step and an attitude adjustment towards the end which was very welcoming. Our first evening meal -although very tasty, one meal was just luke warm. I too fed this back to the chef which he took on board. That night we were back and this time with our friends. Thank goodness, they did not disappoint. The meal was hot and delicious and our friends were very satisfied with the choice and quality. We had one lunch there towards the end of our stay and this was delicious. Everything we had was tasty, fresh with a little different twist to each dish. So some mixed reviews over the week but overall the experience was very good. Still some teething problems but the general manager and head chef seems interested, energetic and welcoming of constructive feed back. I feel it can only get better with these types of people at the helm ready to make some positive changes. We will be back so will let you know how this goes....

I was looking forward to a special meal in a beautiful location, however was very disappointed.

We had a table for 6 booked at 7.30pm and arrived early to enjoy a pre drink in the lounge. The cocktails were very disappointing… they tasted like cordial juice and the presentation was zero.

We were issued to our table and we gave our orders promptly (as we had elderly in our group). There were so many things that we were disappointed with, and I find it hard to write a bad review as I never have before to this extent.

The staff were not only inadequate in their knowledge of the food, how to respond to customers, but were also not dressed appropriately for a so called 5 star resort. This I would not worry too much about if there was pleasant smiles however there was not.

We asked how many breads were in the bread baskets and were advised 3. So as a table of 6 we requested 2 baskets. On arrival there were only 2 per basket and not enough for our table. We asked our waitress what happened and she checked with the chef and came back to advise there was not enough bread left. There was no substitution offered or no reduction on the final bill. My question is how a restaurant of this kind can not have enough bread. Also the accompanying butter was hard as rock.

Our mains arrived finally at 9.30pm. Two hours is a long time to wait with no explanation to why. The waitress said we wouldn’t have to pay for our bottled water since we had to wait so long. We had not ordered bottled water, the water was just placed on our table without the question of what we wanted. I personally only order bottled water when overseas, but in New Zealand tap water is normally perfectly fine to drink. The bottled water was not opened in front of us (seals already broken) and to be fair tasted like chilled tap water.

I had the fish as a main, and I cannot fault it. It was cooked perfectly …. However after a cocktail and 3 wines over such I long period of time, a MacDonalds fish burger would have probably tasted great also.

This place has a beautiful setting in the hills of Pauanui surrounded by greenery and a lovely sunset. The potential of this place is immense, however the overall presentation was disappointing. There were large cobwebs over the windows … not little cobwebs in the corners, but large homes built by what I believe would be large spiders. The woman’s bathroom was filthy, the walls and floor were not clean and an array of pubic hair on the floor in the cubicles. The carpet in the restaurant was not vacuumed, and I was seated on a bench seat with food crumbs next to me. The entire place needs a good spring clean, a lick of paint on the walls and doors.

I will not be back and suggest a new duty manager is required as he was...