Eight Restaurant at Cordis, Auckland — Restaurant in Waitematā

We arrived at the restaurant on 16.01.2022 for my mothers birthday. We were warmly greeted by a Polynesian lady in the reception area of the Eight Restaurant. While another Asian Lady wearing a similar suit of uniform with glasses rudely interrupted our conversation, authoritative tone that we need to wear a mask inside the restaurant. At the same time, in the buffet area (guest can only remove their face mask when they are about to eat). We didn't appreciate how this was communicated to us from her tone and gesture towards us. The Asian lady with glasses who was a supervisor was condescending how she talked to us and dared even to look at us all head to toe. For a restaurant supervisor, we expected her to be more accomodating not to leave a sour taste from the beginning of our visit. The Polynesian lady couldn't help but diffuse the utterly initial ruined experience by escorting us to our table and apologising for their colleague's behaviour. I questioned the restaurant policy if it is mandatory to wear masks how come half of the guests in the buffet area were not wearing masks. We were advised that they will conduct a reminder to the guests to wear a face mask when not at the table to eat.

The restaurant has a fantastic 5-star layout. It was such a mind-blowing experience to enter the buffet area; it was such a spectacular view to have a mini travel adventure to each food station. I enjoyed the American, Indian and seafood stations that truly embellish some of my travel experience. We loved the food experience; all the food was delicious, fresh and genuinely well thought out. Our leading Food and Beverage Specialist, Jason was professional; he was on top of the service with the help of Nicky. Both Jason and Nicky truly changed our initial negative experience to something memorable for my mothers and our family to remember. They both provided such a humble, genuine and five-star experience that this was evident when they checked up on us and had a real conversation about how our day and dining were going. It is pretty rare to have Food and Beverage specialists converse or share stories with guests. These days almost my past restaurant fine dining experience has constantly observed and experienced with waiter/waitress just serving food to guests looking like robots forgetting that food is consumption and experience is a scar that can be looked at later on. Jason and Nicky truly represent Eight Restaurant. I believe they genuinely announce that the place is a 5 Star Buffet not just for food but a memorable moment to hold on to.

Food and Beverage flavours, flare and execution rate 5/5 Reception Staff 2/5 Food and Beverage Service 4/5

Overall rating would have been 4 stars but due to the initial negative...

I've been eating several times here at Eight buffet and always for dinner. However, a totally drastic change since few years back! This is in regards variety of Food and Quality of Food. All Staff was kind and considerate, however the lady at the salad and Oyster station doesn't belong to food industry. She's wearing gloves and refilling Oysters just emptying the bag of oysters into the service tray on the buffet!!!!! This causing leaking and splashing of oysters water/juice all over the very close salads !!!!! Causing contamination and a serious health risk for who may be allergic to seafood! That is the totally wrong spot for Oysters, cannot be next to anything else being fresh seafood especially salads! Also refilling like that it's a big no. This is not the end unfortunately, I saw some Prosciutto which was covered with film, I asked some and she open a cabinet with extremely wet gloves from Oyster that she just refilled and straight after took a prosciutto container she open it without changing gloves and not even drying herself.....she took with those gloves very wet the slices of prosciutto without using anything else just her hands with those gloves still dripping oysters juice !!!!!! I was going to literally vomiting at that scene. She smiled like absolutely normal to use wet gloves from fresh seafood and take with those hands without aid of tongues or anything else the bared prosciutto!!!!! My lord that was something I never ever expected or experienced in my all life !!!!! We also found that even on special May offer it's absolutely overpriced for what you get, I'm not a cheap guy when it comes to dine out at all, it was a last minute decision to be there that night withy Family. Chefs and cooks are extremely nice and also waitress are not well English spoken but we'll educated and attending everyone promptly. NOTE: Few years back the buffet was enormous, it was list three times bigger in variety/food stations! It was better distributed well presented with lots more varieties of dishes for each station, especially pasta meats. Dessert buffet now it's extremely poor and very low quality, before it was gigantic with so many type of desserts, pralines of chocolates at list 40 different type of jist desserts! What a disgrace! It was one of the best restaurant in Auckland, now a disaster and...

With all the raging reviews of the buffet and its cost, honestly I expected a little better... There's no buffet currently, it's what they call a "buffet to table" experience, essentially meaning a set selection of foods brought to your table and not needing to get up and get food. I totally understood this, but really expected the food to be better than it was.

Had bread and butter to start off with - seemed appropriate. But the bread was cold, stiff and a bit dry also. I realised that multiple tables that didn't have anyone there for up to 30 minutes (or so) had a bowl of bread already sitting at the table. It would've been nice to be served some warm bread so that the butter could melt into it.

I was very much looking forward to oysters, but these were very small and had lots of shell pieces/sand/grit in them. I understand they were fresh, but if they're going to be that small to serve, why bother serving them at all? The mussels didn't really come with any seasoning of their own, just had to use the leftover lemon slices to season the cooked mussels. At least the prawn and cocktail sauce paired nicely.

The salads and maki rolls were just average - the rolls didn't have a lot of flavour to them.

The mains were also a bit of a let down! My favourite of the mains was the butter chicken, hard to go wrong with a butter chicken right? The baby grilled octopus were really lackluster, "seasoned" with lemon oil but honestly there was nothing much to it, just a chewy texture and not much flavour. Even their tagliatelle was underseasoned and very plain tasting.

Desserts were much better, but definitely for those who have a pretty extreme sweet tooth.

Probably the most enjoyable aspect of this totally underwhelming experience was how aesthetically pleasing to the eye the venue is, as well as the bathrooms. The service was very friendly. I'm not sure I'll try this again, maybe if the buffet experience...