Feriza's — Restaurant in Waitematā

I'd say a 2.9/5.0

Group of 6 for a birthday dinner:

What we enjoyed: Staff played a birthday song in the background and brought out brownies topped with ice cream and a candle for the birthday girl after a request from one of the people in our group. Generous portions appropriate for the pricing of the mains. Good food. We asked to have the ice cream that comes with the kunefe to be put on the side. That request was fulfilled. I asked for siracha and extra drip (extra charge) on the side. That request was fulfilled.

What we didn't enjoy: We all felt that the vibe we got from the staff was off. The service was OK at the beginning. We got our orders taken at an appropriate time. The female server was nice. But after we got our food, it was difficult to flag down a server or waiter or staff. The male staff member on the floor was focused on getting the empty tables set or cleaned. We tried to get his attention a few times, but could not. Instead, I just walked over to the bar area where the female staff member and the ?owner were doing errands/tasks to ask for something. What I'm trying to say is that we felt a bit ignored/unattended to after the food was served. The kunefe: First, on the menu it says that it comes with pistachio ice cream. What we got tasted like vanilla. Second, the lack of pistachios. On previous reviews or photos showing Feriza's kunefe, it shows the kunefe and ice cream sprinkled with heaps of pistachios. My kunefe barely had a sprinkling. My friend's one had some more, but not much. For one of the mains, one of us asked to swap the couscous for rice. This wasn't done. My friend was hungry and didn't want to wait for a replacement dish so she just ate it. She didn't enjoy it and only ate half of the dish. We helped her finish the rest of it.

Overall: Great hearty, rich food. But the service could be a bit better. We're not divas, but maybe a bit more attentiveness would be great...

My friend and I came here for lunch and it was one of the worst restaurants we’ve ever been to. When we came in we were not greeted by the staff nor were we given a menu. They had given out menus to the couple that came in at the same time as us but never gave us the time of the day. 5 minutes had past and another waiter came in and gave us water, again no greeting, we then politely asked for the menu and the waiter replied with “Yes, just wait.”. Then he came back with a set of menus. My friend and I didn’t care at this point as we were just hungry, and we quickly ordered. The food then came after an HOUR of waiting, my friend and I are we’re almost ready to walk out at this point due to the fact that most customers that had come in after us have already received their plates. We didn’t want to be rude so just stayed and ate the food, the food did not redeem the staff’s horrible customer service though. The fish we had ordered tasted frozen and lacked flavour, my friend had ordered the dolma which didn’t hit as good as we were expecting. The only thing that was good was the curly fries and the calamari. During the entire meal non of the wait staff came over and asked us how it all was. After our meal had finished we had asked one of the staff (I assume the manager), if we can pay and he rudely pointed us to the front. I know that it can be quite overwhelming and busy for the staff, however that should not excuse the poor and disgusting behaviour that we were given. Overall it was a terrible experience for us and we will...

We were a group of 14. Great setup, loved the ambience. It was warm inside which is always great in the winter. But that's about all I can say that was positive. They need a new bartender, I wouldn't bother ordering a cocktail here as it took nearly 45min to receive our drinks (it was a slow night, there were only 2 other groups in the restaurant) they were thoroughly average. Kebabs were raw in the middle (although someone else at our table got the same kebabs and they were actually great, but thats no excuse for serving raw food), just lucky it wasn't our pregnant friend who got the raw kebabs.

Then they forgot to bring out our starters, went straight to mains. The manager did apologise later for the raw food and missed orders, and offered us all a complimentary dessert, which sounded great at first, until we tried it..the doughnuts were rock hard and probably stale, it was awful.. not a great way to come back from a bad situation.

When it came to pay, there was debate about if we had paid for one of our cocktails, rather than giving us the benefit of the doubt, they made us pay for it again. Of course at that stage we just wanted to leave, so we paid for it a second time even though it tasted like a watered down egg shake than a whisky sours. :-(

If the complimentary dessert wasn't awful, I probably would've ranked up to 4 stars since the wait staff at least made an effort to apologise..but it seems the problems here stem deeper into the whole management...