Jack Tar - Bar & Restaurant Review

Today was such a glorious day that we decided it was high time we checked out the newly redeveloped Wynyard Quarter.  Simon had a quick look for recent reviews of the various restaurants down there before we went, and fortuitously also saw a note from a colleague who had eaten there this morning.  The comments seemed to all be of the nature of 'expect teething problems'.  So we went with the expectation of probably needing to wait and maybe not having the most polished of service.

We spent an absolute age trying to find a carpark, and in hindsight we probably should have just gone straight to Simon's work carpark, or, had we have realised earlier, we could have used the Wilson's carparks for $5 - their signs didn't make it terribly obvious that they had a seperate weekend rate.  Next time though!

We wandered around for a bit and commented with relief that finally there is more of the waterfront being made use of in Auckland. The whole area was absolutely heaving with people, and rightly so - it's a beautiful place for a day out in the sunshine, right along the waterfront with loads of access through to the viaduct, a huge kids playground and paddle pool, and some oversized deck chairs further along for the adults.

After browsing through all of the insanely busy restaurants and bars, we headed back to Jack Tar and lurked near a table that looked like it was soon to vacate, and headed off other hopeful patrons!  We ordered a seafood platter to share, a small salad of tomato, olives & feta and Simon had a garlic pizza bread.

The seafood platter had prawns and freshly grilled fish in a garlic butter - both absolutely delicious, shaved smoked salmon and seared tuna, a couple of fresh oysters, mussels and some lemon curry seasoned smoked fish.  It was all really good, and a great size for 2 people to share.  The salad was good, although quite small.  Simon enjoyed his garlic pizza bread, commenting that the thickness and cookedness was really good, but that it was a little light on the garlic.

Our wait time was possibly a little extended and it did take some time to actually get someones attention to take our order, but the service was certainly pleasant, and hopefully these are simply symptoms of it being new and insanely busy.  Hopefully they'll improve over the next couple of weeks in the lead up to RWC.  That said, we certainly didn't have a negative experience and we would definitely return.  All of the food we saw being delivered to other tables looked really good.

A night out in Queenstown

We visited several bars on a Friday night (although apparently you can do this any night in Queenstown and sometimes Friday can be a quiet night), starting with Stacks Pub at the Hilton in Frankton. This is a new bar that is surprisingly well-priced with excellent $17 pizzas and alcohol at non-exorbitant prices. There is also a water taxi that goes from the Hilton to Town (and vice versa) that at $5 per person is great value; not surprisingly the last water taxi for the evening (9:30pm) was our transport to the town for the evening.

The Boiler Room is a nice bar on the waterfront that still had a couple of tables free when we arrived about 9:45pm, but by the time we left was really busy (and noisy) and had a good youthful vibe.

The Ballarat Trading Company was our next stop for a couple of beers; this was a lot quieter and seemed to attract more of a 30+ year old crowd (on the night we we there anyway).

Upstairs from the Ballarat Trading Company is Winnie’s. This bar had a very young crowd and was very lively. They also apparently do really good pizzas. It reminded me a bit of being at bars when back at University.

To top it all off we went to BarUp cocktail bar and stayed here for hours until closing time at 4am. They were playing great music, the wait staff were full of energy, the bar was busy and the Money Shot cocktail was superb. It is not a large bar, but it had an excellent vibe and I expect probably attracts a 25+ year old crowd. On another night we came back hear and it was reasonably quiet until around 2:30am.

Another evening we went to SkyBar, a cocktail bar that is nicely decorated, but we were almost the only people there. It can however be quite busy sometimes apparently.

On the same evening we also went to The World Bar which had a very youthful crowd and was buzzing with activity. You can also order a teapot full of your selection of cocktail.