Bodrum Market — Restaurant in Waitematā

Standards have dropped significantly at the Newmarket Bodrum from a couple of years ago. It used to be excellent here when they first opened, now it's average at best. The squab covers on the sofa seats have all cracked and deteriorated to the point that they feel unsafe and are a serious detraction from the ambiance that is otherwise good.

We ordered the prawn dish and the calamari dish. The calamari was a small dish, which they refused to make in a main size for me, as good restaurants will do without batting an eyelid. You know you are off to a bad start when your hosts are unable or unwilling to make small changes to accommodate their customers individual needs. Both dishes were served with a lemon slice on the side, as you would expect, but both lemon slices were rotten and we had to send them back. The friendly waiter was apologetic and returned quickly with fresh replacements. However, any self-respecting chief would never serve rotten anything to their customers, as it is a health risk. But then, to add insult to injury, the salads that were also part of each dish, had some manky yellowing and rotting green leaves that we had to sift out, and even then, the remaining salad was dry and tasteless, too much cabbage, and without olive oil or dressing.

On the upside, the prawns were very good, with a tasty, spicy sauce, and the bread slice was the only item I would say was fresh and delicious, with a fabulous texture. Unfortunately though, the calamari was over cooked, dry and hard, not soft and creamy as the good restaurants do it. It appeared to have too much flour in the batter, requiring more cooking to get the batter cooked than the delicate squid can tolerate, and making it thick and hard and unpleasant.

Finally, at a Turkish eatery, you would expect excellent Turkish coffee (especially for the high price charged), just as I remembered it from my previous visit, but sadly, not this time, another mediocre let-down. However, the small Turkish Delight on the side, was good.

Overall, I got the impression that cost-cutting is now the top priority for management here, and not customer experience or satisfaction. Therefore, I cannot recommend and will not be back again after that very...

Frankly, our visit was a mixed experience. The food was good. I had the Greek meatballs which were very tasty. Our friends had an Angus burger (which they loved) and a meat pizza of some kind that was pretty good (though you had to pay for cheese which was strange given it was a pizza, and the meat heavily spiced). My wife had a kebab which she said was quite nice, but lacked vegetables or things that made it stand out from good kebabs at roadside kebab store.

But what makes this a 3 star experience was the service. We had an 8 o’clock booking and when we got around to ordering closer to 8:20 we did indicate that we would want desert as well. We even discussed the available dessert options with our waitress as we ordered our mains. We finished our meal at about 9:20 and then waited for someone to come take our plates and our dessert order. However staff became quite inconspicuous. We never saw our waitress again after she had delivered our mains.

The next thing we knew the person running the restaurant that evening turned up with our bill and just popped it on the table. A very direct request for us to leave. And we were not the last table there. Just the one not drinking heavily. So maybe not worth the effort. Anyway, up we dutifully stood and left.

This was all very disappointing as I don’t get to eat out in a restaurant often, and was looking forward specifically to the Tiramisu that was available at Bodrum, while others were keen on the Baklava.

I guess I will never know if it is good Tiramisu as I am not inclined to return. But if you want to go, please do - the food is pricey ( what isn’t these...

Terrible food - so bad that I am compelled to leave a review. There was one teaspoon of hummus on the "Meditarranean Hummus" dish, so we asked for more to be brought out (which they tried to charge us an extra $4 for and we said no way!). A supermarket hummus is outstanding in comparison, we couldn't believe how bad the flavour of their hummus was. The falafel it came with was near on inedible, dry and crumbly inside and the flavour was just cooking oil. Ordered three $12 mocktails which were so sickly sweet and tasted of cordial. The greek salad we ordered was also terrible, $12 for a greek side salad, not one single crumb of feta, a couple of pruned up old olives, mostly red onion and capsicum and some sad looking fancy leaf lettuce, the whole thing was warm and just tasted of warm olive oil. We had a kids chicken dish that was overcooked and dry. The pizza and the octopus dish were the only half decent items. There were tons of dirty dishes piled up on the bar right by us while wait staff wandered around, one in particular always looking at her phone. Also the music was terrible - weird rock music playing, did not suit a restaurant setting at all. Where was some authentic Turkish music? We definitely will not be back again - a real shame because the decor is really cool and the place had the potential...