Miha Restaurant at Grand Mercure Puka Park Resort

Booked table for 4 for 7pm. Arrived on time but table not ready. After 40 minute wait asked manager when table would be ready. Told 5 minutes but more like 10. Service slow. Ordered food. After 40 minutes asked manager what the status of food was. Again given 5 minutes as answer. Eventually 15 minutes latér the last of food ordered arrived. Portions small and food OK, not great considering price. Curry was not curry; at best bland stew. The potatoes done in duck fat side was 4 small boiled potatoes with minimum sign of duck fat. Glass of red wine not generous but way worse was the red wine had not been stored correctly and allowed to get warm. It was room temperature which was 25 degrees. Tasted áwefull. Really disappointed as when we are there in August the service was good and food and wine was good. Unlikely to return.

Excellent this restaurant would have been in 2001. Menu outdated, Service subpar and food almost terrible. Kudos to this genius creative chef Lamb rack served with peas and either carrot or sweet potato mash hard to tell really something you might get away with serving at a retirement home, on a low budget airline or at the hospital, and wait for it Fillet Mignon served with Yorkshire Pudding an amazing attempt to get the French and the English to like each other or just pure genius in taking the mickie out of the patrons, I was bold and had this twice and only for lack of any other decent choices. The first time it sure was a fillet mignon however the second time we were served scotch fillet instead and had to send it back unfortunately much to the chefs dislike, the servers were dopey and sleepy and kept forgetting to put through drinks and items. Had to reorder more than once.
Breakfast buffet was a joke in at 9 am there was nothing left and was told they will top up shortly. Not worth the wait though or the money. Honourable mention to the bartender Mike I believe it was who did the best he could mind you he too forgot an important request but never mind, the rest of the staff were terrible and unatentive.
In conclusion only eat here if you want to relive the 2000s, and make sure your expectations are way way low so you don't get disappointed. Good Luck

I was given a $100 meal voucher as a birthday gift to use at this restaurant. I pre-booked for 8pm and when we arrived we sat in the restaurant bar. All beautiful and elegant. We were then seated a little after 8 in front of open doors looking out to a lovely view and in normal circumstances that would have been great but it was windy and wet that night so I was pretty cold. However, the place was full and as it wasn't freezing so we just stayed where we were. We were asked if we wanted sparkling or still water and chose sparkling. 20 minutes later still no water. We alerted a waitress and she comes back with the water and our menus. I order the seafood laksa soup for starters and a main of lamb curry. We also order 3 sides.wok veges, duck-fried potatoes and chips and aioli. We also ordered 2 basic cocktails. Cocktails arrive and a little while later my soup arrives which is pretty tasteless and has chewy bland stuff in it which I assume is calamari and the only seafood I could find. I love pepper which I would never put on a laksa but I had to have something to give it a taste. Anyway I finish my soup.and we wait. The person with me hadn't had anything to eat since arrival and after another 1/2 hour of other people being served I waved down a waitress again. It was past 9pm by then.and we had arrived at 8. Other patrons had just about finished their meal and they had arrived after us. Seems there was a miscommunication in the kitchen and our meal hadn't been cooked. So we waited again and out it came. Now the 3 side orders were fine, no problem. My meal however was awful The rolled pappadom was slightly burnt on the bottom. The rice which was in a mound and the roti were ok. The curry was in a tall sort of saucepan. When I looked into the saucepan the curry had separated and there was about 1/4 of the pot full of oil with the curry underneath. I thought maybe this was deliberate so I stirred up the curry from the bottom but as soon as it rested it would split again. So I poured it out over the rice hoping it would blend. Nope, oil seeped into the corner of the plate. The curry itself tasted as if it had just been cooked with a store-bought curry powder. I was really hungry when they bought it out.so I ate just over half of it before I decided to leave it. I then asked if they could tell me if I'd used up the all of the gift voucher and it turned out we had $6 left. So I ordered the Tiramasu for dessert. By this time it was almost 9: 45 and they closed at 10. I waited and waited and no pudding arrived. So I flagged down another waitress.and said we'd been waiting for ages and no dessert. Another waitress comes back and says oh sorry the Tiramasu has finished. What other dessert would you like? By this time I just wanted to get that $6 off the voucher and run like hell so I said "I'll have the carrot pudding. Honestly, there was so little another choice. I remember she offered a chocolate brownie or chocolate chip ice cream. So I chose the pudding which I didn't really enjoy. I just wanted to get out of that place as soon as. We ended up being the last ones out of the place and you could see the waitresses just wanted to go home too
Now the only thing I can't remember.was the timing of when the manager came over. It was after the dinner but pretty sure it was before I got the pudding. He was all apologetic and said he was sorry for spoiling my birthday. He said he took the blame and gave us a bottle of wine.made all the hoopla over giving me this exotic specially made for me cocktail, and only charged us up to the amount of the voucher. Everything else was free.which would have only amounted to half the pudding. This was an attempt at making amends and needs to be mentioned but all and all.it was very disappointing.and although we received an apology, a bottle of wine and a fancy cocktail basically the birthday treat was ruined. Unfortunately my phone was low on power so the only pics I took were at the end of the curry meal but you can still see the oil seeping into the corner.

Food is hit and miss. More miss than hit!
Service was good at dinner time however at lunch due to only 1 server run off her feet waiting on 7 tables it was lacking. Felt quite sorry for her.

Quite basic buffet breakfast with limited selection of jams, breads and no fresh fruits.

Lunch was pretty good, I had the mussels and my husband had the chicken burger.

Dinner, the duck I had had quite a rubbery skin and slightly over cooked, the lamb that my husband got was overcooked. My daughter had a really nice picnic platter but at $25 for kids meal was a little steep. We ordered lamb the next night and asked for it to be medium rare so they got that right. I ordered a chicken curry of the menu with roti and rice, what I got was lamb curry, rice and tortilla. For a head chef of international culinary skills you would expect them to know the difference between a roti and tortilla! No apologies for bringing out the wrong dish either.

The sponge in the tiramisu was dry.not pleasant at all. The chocolate brownie was not a brownie but quite a dry cake.
The rocket salad was amazing though.

Both nights we spent just over $200 for 2 adults and a toddler. Overpriced for sure!

We booked for 1900H dinner and was seated at 1930H, they were not even full. A couple of groups were seated before us even though they arrived after us. What's the use of booking ahead if other people will be seated ahead of you. They did apologise and said they could not find us when they told us to wait as our table was being prepared.

But that did not stop there. So we were seated at 1930H. Our orders were taken in less than 10 minutes but our starters were served after 30 minutes then mains around 2045H. At this point there were only 5 tables left to be served with 2-3 people per table. Then again customers who were seated after us was served first. Such a disappointing experience. We finished our dinner at 2105H. The food was delicious but the wait and how we were treated does not make up for the service we received. We did not order dessert since the service was ridiculous and since we were staying in the resort overnight we did not came back for breakfast the next day because of our experience the night before.

Addendum:
When we checked out, we raised the issue and the staff acknowledged and apologised for the issue.

This is the worst ever Customer Service. When we bookeed the accommodation they did not inform us about a wedding for this night. When we checked in on the day, again no one said anything. We made a booking for dinner, then no one said anything. We arrived for our dinner, again no one said anything. We ordered and at 8.40pm, the waitress advisee us that there is 1hour delay on all food imcluding things that do not have to be cooked!

We tried it twice, our visits several months apart, both for lunch. The first time it was the service: after 45 minutes in an all-but-deserted restaurant we had to locate the waitress to ask whether our lunch would actually arrive. The second time it was the food: a Caesar salad minus egg, bacon and parmesan! A summer-season, fresh fruit salad with not one berry fruit to be seen. Disappointing doesn't cover it; this place is a total let-down and poor value for money.

Going back to review this after our Valentine's Day weekend dinner here, and sadly the service really killed what would have been a nice dining experience; while these pictures of our plates look nice, there were issues throughout our meal.

Asked waiter for tap water, but got bottled. Waiter also constantly walked away from our table without asking if we wanted anything else (we did). We asked what citrus fruit is in the gin and tonic, and they said lime but it was lemon. We asked where their oysters were from and they said "Umm.local. " Our plated mains were practically dropped on the table as they said, "Here's your steak" before turning on their heels and leaving. We asked for glass of red wine to go with the steak, but we never got it until we asked someone else. The aged steak ended up being very good, and the maple pork belly was even better, BUT there were two pork belly pieces and one wasn't cooked anywhere close to the other. One pulled apart so nicely, the other had to carve into. Whenever we may be in the area again, I'm sure we may have a second go here and see if it was just a really bad day on a special weekend, but for now, sadly have to give all of this a 3.

Miha is really the only constant in Pauanui, in the respect that it is reliably open seven days a week, breakfast lunch and dinner. Breakfast is usually great, some à la carte options and a varied buffet. Lunch and dinner can be up and down, sometimes it is top quality, sometimes a bit average but never terrible, inconsistencies can probably be attributed to the nature of the industry and location, staff are generally never permanent and change often, including management.
In saying that the staff have always been very polite and respond well to compliments and criticism, if you are unhappy with something just let them know and they will do all they can to help. The bar and lounge are great, nice place to relax meet new people or friends. Plenty of outside seating, great for when the weather is right. I will return.