This restaurant came highly recommended by our Airbnb hosts, so we were very excited to try it out.
The place looked pretty attractive, with lots of seating inside and outside, and quite a few customers.
However, there was no host to seat us, no servers or menus to be seen anywhere. We didn't know what to do.
There were some people standing at the bar who appeared to be ordering food. So, I decided to ask the bartender, who then responded: "just wait here!" After about 10 minutes just standing there, I finally asked one of the patrons for a menu he didn't seem to be using. But even then we were still ignored for another 10 minutes.
We ended up walking out and no one seemed to care. We hadn't liked the atmosphere inside very much either; it was more of a rowdy bar scene than a restaurant. And we decided to go elsewhere.
But alas, that turned out a lot harder than we anticipated. In the small town of Pirongia, there simply was no elsewhere.
It was either eat granola bars for dinner or try our luck one more time.
Things went a little better the second time around. The bartender was less pre-occupied, brought us menus to a nice quiet table outside, with the apology: "Sorry, we just had to deal with some things..."
Oh well.....
We ordered a large pizza with interesting toppings, duck, artichokes, dates to share. And I must admit, it was absolutely delicious. One pizza was plenty for the both of us and more.
Honestly, I can only give a them the three stars for the super tasty quality pizza. But I wasn't a fan of the general bar like atmosphere, with loud-mouthed patrons and the service was really, really poor.
I feel like I'm being generous with the three stars, because the one pizza was the only thing we tried.
I hope others will have a better experience; otherwise the owner of this place might consider sending his staff to some customer service training. read more