Cocoro — Restaurant in Waitematā

The food is usually very good and ambience is nice for special occasions. This visit was no exception. However, my partner found a moth floating in the broth of their Inaniwa udon, as you can see from the attached photos (a little hard to see due to the lighting, but the antenna and legs are clearly visible). I understand that this happens occasionally with every establishment, but a premium restaurant like Cocoro needs to do better. Me and my partner actually had some of this dish prior to finding the moth! We didn’t make a scene, but it’s disgusting to think that one of us could have swallowed the moth by accident on top of drinking the moth-soaked broth. When we complained, the staff apologised profusely, which was decent of them. I still really wanted to just pay and leave at that point, as the thought of eating moth soup was disgusting. My partner wanted to stay for the dessert we ordered, so there we stayed, had a new udon that they re-prepared and dessert. At the end of the meal, they gave us some chocolate ganache as apology. When paying, they told us about how they will review their pest control (they current have two dispensers). If you are curious, no, they did not take the udon off the bill. The food was delicious, as always, but I took down 4 stars for the moth. Customer service is excellent, attentive and helpful, but greatly lacking the ability to respond to this sort of situation. I hope it was an isolated incident as Cocoro used to be my favourite Japanese restaurant, although I now doubt their overall food safety standards...

Fine dining Japanese degustation is not something I expected in Auckland. Cocoro restaurant is a tiny little space off the main Ponsonby strip. The welcome is warm and genuine and is backed up by excellent service and superb food. In Japanese degustation, I expect the difference in a restaurant is in the quality of produce and this is second to none.

Fish that came out of the water that morning, vegetables and herbs picked from local producers that day. The dishes can be paired with wines from New Zealand based, Japanese producers and sake from top Japanese producers.

Presentation is superb and shows real innovation. The first dish you are offered is in a large box which is placed on your table and opened with a flourish. Inside the box each dish is presented on different layers and wood smoke wafts out to provide an olfactory engagement with the dish.

Within is the Chefs selection of snacks which starts your palate on the journey. As you would expect in New Zealand, seafood plays a strong part in the menu. The Crayfish is amazing, but my dish of the night was the steamed green lipped mussel. I don't like mussels in general, but this was fantastic with a vinegar and Daishi jelly combination providing a sweet/sour combination with the salt.

If you are in Auckland, I highly recommend a visit. If you are lucky and live local, they also do a very small selection of...

I celebrated my birthday here with a group of friends in June. Having a huge understanding of the Japanese culture and food, I had to check out first that the place is in fact owned and run by Japanese people and I was delighted to find that it was (because in AKL many places are not….beware!). We had the set menu and the food was very impressive. A couple of us had dietary requirements which they were very happy to accommodate. Presentation is outstanding and the dishes they use to create the appetizing artistic gastronomy is beautiful and traditional. The courses were spaced out enough for us to not feel rushed. I read one of the previous comments that they felt there wasn’t enough food with the set menu so that did concern me. However I have a big appetite and we all felt it was more than ample. We were all certainly satisfied. But you do have the choice to add some more sushi to the set menu and we did that, not because we were still hungry but because the food was so delicious we wanted more. The sashimi melted in our mouths and god it was good, absolutely top quality just like what you get in Japan. We had some serious wine connoisseurs in our group and they were VERY impressed with the huge wine selection! Service was outstanding, staff were very obliging and it far exceeded my expectations. None of us had been there before so it was a very...