The New Plymouth family have been visiting this week, and tonight we went out for dinner before they return home tomorrow morning.

I chose Goldfinch as it's one of the newest restaurants in town, located as it is where "King of Snake" used to be. It appeared to me that nothing had changed with the place except the name and menu - probably the staff as well, but visually the restaurant hasn't changed at all.

Connor (grandson) knows that I write this blog, and after our first interaction with out "waiter" which was what he called himself (his name was Marco), asked me how I would rate the service so far. I said that he appeared to be quite attentive, whereupon, Connor suggested that he was a bit intrusive and smarmy. I cannot deny it. He was. Maybe that was because hearing his accent, I politely asked him where he was from. He said Wellington. So I pushed - maybe that's what did it. He's from Croatia. It was amusing to note than when a new group of diners took up residence at an adjacent table, they must have asked him the same thing (I guess he gets it all the time, and he's over it), and he said that if they could come up with the correct answer at the end of their meal, dessert would be on the house. We, of course, immediately told them where he was from.

Anyway, I digress.

Let's talk about the food. It's Asian Fusion, and it's excellent. Truly excellent. There's a mixture of small, medium and large plates and all plates are put in the middle of the table so that everyone can try everything.

We chose edamame beans, dumplings, wild boar skewer (I doubt this was really wild as it didn't have a gamey taste at all) chicken satay skewers, prawn and lychee salad, beef with patatas bravas, and pork belly.

I didn't manage to get photos of all the dishes because this is what the table looked like eventually.

It was indeed all delicious. We all agreed that the best dish was the chicken satay skewers because the sauce they came with was on a totally different level. But all the dishes were great.

We were seated out in the closed in porch area where the sun was in the eyes of the people sitting facing west, and was really bright with a glare on the table as well. There were "block-out" curtains but on the west wall, they couldn't cope with the amount of sun at 7pm.

Service: 3.5/5 Food: 5/5 Ambience: 3.5/5 Total 12/15

 This free site is ad-supported. Learn more
​