Johnny Barr’s Fresh Food Bistro

Was here yesterday for brunch with work colleagues. Unfortunately they dont have a lot of veg /​vegan options. Ended up having an almond /​chocolate milkshake but the service was good. My colleagues seemed to enjoy their meaty meals however. Oh and they gave us a discount as we were from a local business. Way to go !

We came here for a Sunday brunch. This place is quite big with a subtle nautical theme. From the start the service was very poor, the wait staff had just unplugged for the day. But the service was not the only unpleasant experience. For my hot beverage I ordered green tea, and I was served Lipton. You see I’m a tea drinker so Lipton tea is the equivalent to instant coffee. While acceptable at gas stations and 7/​11, I do not want to drink/​pay for a Lipton tea at a nicer restaurant. Next we put our food order: big breakfast for the bf and the waffles for me. The waffles on the menu come with mascarpone, but apparently they ran out and I was offered vanilla ice cream instead. I’m not a fan of vanilla ice cream, so I asked for some fruit instead. So after all the mishaps, I must compliment the chef because our food was delicious. My waffles were covered in a berry compote, but they still have a nice «crunch» and were not soggy. The bf keep on raving about the Big Breakfast and how good it was. I find it frustrating when service ruins the work of a good chef, but such was the case for this place.

Been here for lunch a few times, menus has changed, mainly pub food now. Good seating, average food and long waiting time. Make sure you come before 12 for lunch if you are ordering from their menu and not their cabinet food. Otherwise prepare to wait for at least half and hour! Good coffee by one of the staff… but not the same quality by the other staffs…

This is the third time that I’ve actually been here so that should say something. The portion size are really generous, especially if you get the set menu. The first time we were here, they still had the 3 course menu offer and by the time we finished everything, we were just about to enter a food coma from the amount of food we has consumed.
I’m a big fan of Mac n Cheese and these guys have 4 different options for you to choose from. Today we picked the Cheddar & Chorizo + Parmesan, prawn & pomodoro. Both were pretty tasty, however the cheddar & chorizo combination was too salty for my liking for the second time in a row.
We also ordered the goat cheese & honey crostini with a light salad which was surprisingly delicious. Personally I’m not a huge fan of goat cheese because of its strong taste but the honey worked well with balancing out the strong flavor of the cheese.
For dessert, we had the cookie ice cream sandwich. It was ok, slightly too sweet between the cookie itself and the chocolate sauce they drowned the plate in. I recommend the cheesecake if you like your cheese cake creamy and your base crumbly.
To wash everything down, I chose the Almond Joy milkshake and my dinner companion went for the Snickers milkshake. Sadly her love affair with the Snicker milkshake had come to an end today after the discovery of its existence just last month. «It’s just not as good as it was last time» she said.
The service was great and the food came out pretty fast. Everytime we come here, we would always meet really friendly wait staff with great service. I would definitely come back again but I’m hope to see a bit of a change up with the menu next time around.

Where do I begin… This place had so much promise & yet failed to deliver in SO SO so many places.
I read the menu for this place online & I was hooked in with the Mac n’ Cheese & chicken & waffles. I took my parents with me & mum was equally excited with the menu.
Right so they had an offer that on paper sounded like a sweet deal, three course meal without a drink, $ 49 each. Right? Not the worst price. But & there is a but the food was truly ordinary. Let me explain.
Truffled mushroom Macaroni & cheese. Sounds great, could have been phenomenal… Could being the operative word. Instead there was this amazingly tasty crunchy cheesy topping underneath was a gritty, grainy powdery pasta that reminds me of that stuff you buy in the supermarket in the packet. So disappointing because I have been craving a really creamy moorish Mac n’ Cheese.
The main boy oh boy was I looking forward to this. I had Roscoes chicken and waffles when I was in LA & I compare it to that every time. What I got was so laughably bad, I physically chuckled. I got what can only be described as the single worst panne ever! The coating was forced together, leaving the chicken a good couple of millimetres between it & the ‘breading.’ Then the waffle, they are supposed to be crispy on the outside soft and pillowy on the inside. Not flat, chewy & Lukewarm.
Finally dessert, an icecream sandwich. Three scoops of vanilla between 2 chocolate chip cookies. On paper again delicious. I am a massive fan of the dairy’s icecream sandwich from Ponsonby Central. This one… Nope. Just don’t bother. The cookies had too much sugar so they were hard as bullets, the icecream was so cheap I think they forgot to put vanilla in the icecream because it didn’t taste of anything.
The last thing I will say about this meal… I had the snickers thick shake. Decadent, chocolatey & peanuty but completely ruined by it have so much sugar in it by the end of my meal I had a tummy ache from all the sugar I had eaten.
I won’t speak for my parents meal… The one positive, service was great. Fast, efficient & friendly. That is why this meal doesn’t get no stars.

Johnny’s is a nice restaurant to hang out with friends :) their milkshakes are a real hit and I do enjoy one with my friends
Their snicker milkshake was and is the best to go for. However if you’re not so much of a sweet tooth they have other types of shakes and juices too.
The restaurant itself is really nice setting
I had a set menu which consisted of muscles for starter and for mains I had a nice heaping of baby back ribs
The muscles they served looked amazing and they were really generous with the portions. However I feel the muscles was lacking just a little bit of flavor. Maybe having a bit of zest like lemon would help with that extra zing
Mains was definitely tough to judge as coming from the state the ribs there had amazing flavor and making ribs at home myself means that I ordered the ribs with expectations. However I felt the ribs were a bit of a swing and a miss, the flavor felt like it just had BBQ sauce on the top and then grilled. I didn’t really taste the flavor soaking through the meat.
We’ve come here two times and I have to admit that johnny’s need to up their game on flavor.

3.5 stars overall, if Unilocal allowed (and 4 for the food).
My wife purchased a grab one dinner for two (entrée and dinner for $ 49) and I called to make a booking for 6pm Wednesday but they were fully booked until Sunday. So, 6:30pm Sunday we made the booking and although less than half full it looked like there were plenty of other grab one customers. I am not sure if they would have been fully booked on the Wednesday because it generally feels quiet, but you never know, and will give the benefit of the doubt here.
Service was not so great but not shocking. There was just the one waiter who was a little busy and we found ourselves waiting a little.
My wife ordered the ribs but they had run out of the ribs. It’s a little disappointing. Because it’s early evening I think they simply did not have them, for whatever reason. The did not advise us of that and I also don’t remember being advised of the pasta of the day.
Food was not so quick to come out. Food was generally good, except… I ordered a burger and fries, and there was no sauce for the fries — I am not sure if it’s my job to go and find it or ask for it, but usually there is tomato sauce and a good restaurant would make sure it was easily available, and in my opinion it should be on the plate — not a big deal.
What is a bigger deal is the bacon on my burger — some of that was cooked to be so dark and crispy it hurt my teeth to crunch through it. Because burgers are assembled, the chef must have known it was like that when they assembled the burger. Not very good.
Because we had a pre-​paid voucher, all we had to do was pay for one drink we had extra, but surprisingly when my wife was presented with the eftpos terminal it had $ 102 on the display.
Two final things, we were seated towards the back, and the bass of the music is all that we could hear back there. At the front the music sounds ok, but at the back it’s just the very deep bass sound ONLY. And the final thing — our table was constructed of wooden boards on top, and there is a 2 mm gap between those planks and inbetween you can see little tiny bits of food and who knows what else. I don’t know if that is their look but I just think when you accumulate crumbs and sauce and other things which fall into those cracks, over time it will look worse and possibly not smell nice.
I would give 3.5 stars if Unilocal allowed, and probably a 4 for the food, because overall it’s not too bad. But with standard pricing set on the higher end, I expect a little better. One or two things not perfect is ok, but the details add up, with service and speed being important, so that even with a voucher I would rather not return and visit the fish and chip shop in Wynyard instead, or one of the restaurants that gets the sun. I’d just rather try somewhere else. Grab one was a great chance for this place to get some exposure but I feel like they are not doing enough to make the place a memorable part of the Wynyard destination like the other restaurants in the area.

My girlfriend brought me here and was very surprised. Great restaurant venue space, reasonably priced, and chefs from Italy and France. Went for Trivia night and had a great time.
Food wise, I’ve had the eggs Benedict and the waffles, both of which are delicious. Definitely would recommend.

I was really not impressed by the food at Johnny Barr’s. We came on a Saturday night at dinner time, and only a few tables were taken, not really what you’d expect in a buzzing place like Wynyard Quarter! The service was fine, we were seated and our orders taken quickly but our waiter could have been a bit friendlier. I wouldn’t have cared about that if the food was good though! Unfortunately it wasn’t.
As it was happy hour, we got some buffalo wings to share as an appetiser. The wings themselves had very unpleasantly crunchy skins (probably a bit overcooked), and the BBQ sauce they were covered in wasn’t an especially nice one. I ordered the chicken and waffles, which is a classic Southern US dish. While the waffles were nice, there was too much maple syrup which really made the dish too sweet (normally chicken and waffles are served with maple syrup on the side so you can choose how much to use). But the real disappointment was the chicken, which was overcooked and chewy. The chocolate brownie we shared for dessert was nice, but it’s hard to mess up a brownie isn’t it!
Overall, I can see why it was one of the quieter spots in Wynyard Quarter, and I can’t say I would recommend it for dinner.

quick note: the directions on Unilocal are inaccurate. The location is on Halsey St next to ASB.
Meeting a close mate for brunch. We were both looking forward to trying «Auckland’s Best Muesli». That’s a bold claim… challenge accepted!
I should point out, I’m a huge granola fan boi. I workout and train 4 – 6 hours a day. So when I say I was looking forward to trying this place I mean I rearranged my entire workout cycle so I could meet my mate at an agreed time. I really wanted to try this muesli.
We walked in around 9am and the automatic doors opened so slowly that I hit my shoulder and there were so few people, we thought it was closed at first. After the door finally opened, the table with the only three customers just off to the left reassured us the restaurant was indeed open. I thought it was odd that the atmosphere was extremely subdued despite being next to ASB. Another odd thing was that there didn’t seem to be anyone around to greet us so we decided to pick a table and wait patiently for service. We later learned that one of the waitress failed to show and the duty manager was doing his best to keep it all together. The place may have been sparse but the music was cranked up. Not sure why the volume was so loud, we felt like we were in a night club and not a brunch restaurant.
To his credit, the duty manager was very friendly when he greeted us and we didn’t have to wait long. If he was flustered it wasn’t showing.
We both ordered the muesli. It consisted of Homemade toasted rolled oats, coconut, cranberry, apricot, raisin, sultana, sliced almond, sunflower seed, crushed hazelnut, Spanish peanut, quinoa, amaranth, flaxseed, chia seeds, psyllium husk and honey served with a side of yogurt, milk and fruit compote. Sounds so healthy and epic, right?! Since I’m a workout freak all that sounds awesome! However, the menu failed to mention what type of yogurt it was served with. I’m assuming Greek style by the taste. It also didn’t mention the kind of milk they served with it. It tasted like whole milk. The fruit compote eas just off-​the-​shelf fruit and it made the dish too mushy. I would have preferred some type of firm fresh fruit. Overall the meal was ok. I wouldn’t call it «The best in AKL» I think that distinction goes to The Store in Britomart.
We both had coffee. Me a mocha and my lovely company ordered a cappuccino (flat white). We both made the same observation that the cups were too small. *note to self: order coffee in a to go container*

Quite new restaurant in Viaduct. firstly bit cheaper than other café or restaurant in that area. I went there late morning on Saturday for brunch. Not super fancy but reasonable area. Staffs were friendly.
We ordered Egg Benedict and Big breakfast. Meal was good and coffee was not bad. Actually I can’t complain about food with that price range. Because I know some restaurants around Viaduct are worse and much expensive.
That café doesn’t have nice scenery, so if you want to have something rather than have wine with sea though the window, then probably good choice.

I came here with friends and was pleasantly surprised. The food was amazing! We got to try American style Buffalo wings with blue cheese dipping sauce, BBQ pulled pork and fried chicken & waffles! Definitely worth a visit!