Fiance Restaurant (Gisborne, New Zealand)

Our last leg on our short trip to Lower North Island in New Zealand and we are here at Gisborne, it is also our last dine out for this journey but was it a good choice to have our last dining experience here? After a 3-hour trip from Napier we finally arrived at our final destination and it was quite late already for a restaurant to be open in Gisborne, it was nearly 8:00 PM when we arrived, luckily, they still accepted us after we had called them and placed our orders over the phone.

Located at the centre of Gisborne you will not miss this place if you are passing by as, it is in a Pacific Coast Highway a main road that passes through the city centre. It is a quite spacious restaurant specially for something outside of Auckland at it even looked bigger as we were the only ones who had dined in during that time, so the place was all for us. As mentioned, we did pre-ordered so what we did was just sit and waited for our food to arrive.

We grabbed several sides and several mains; we were quite hungry after a having a dip at Ocean Spa and a long drive.

Of course, we ordered Kiwi Style Butter Chicken (NZ$19.99), Oven grilled chicken cooked in cream and butter. This has to be done, it is our family favourite.

Then some fish curry, Alleppy Fish (NZ$22.99), a Curry Cooked with Fresh Ground Whole Spices Coconut Cream, Chopped Onion and Curry Leaves.

We also had some grilled fish Grilled Fish (NZ$19.99), Fresh market fish fillets, tomato salsa, rice, salad.

And a big serving of Beef Biryani (NZ$19.99), Seasoned Kerala style baked premium aged basmati rice with Raita.

On the side we grabbed some Pappadam & Dips (NZ$3.99)

Naan (3.99)

and Set Dosa (NZ$3.99), a Mini rice and lentil pancake.

Certainly, it was a lot of food, the serving sizes were huge. Rice portions was quite hefty too. So far all of the curries tasted amazing, not too overpowering spices, just enough so that you can still taste the protein.

Having said that not everything was perfect, while the curries was spot on, where it all fell apart was the biryani, it was quite wet not in a good way but in a way like there was a bit of water poured on it. The meat tasted good but it was just the rice which was a let-down. Another thing that was not up to my expectation was the set dosa, I was expecting the thin batter-based crispy dish but instead I got a pancake style dosa which was soft. It was my fault though; all I though was a “Set” dosa but there is a real dish called “Set dosa” which is the one served. Other than those, everything was good, our hunger was filled in fact we were so full, we intended to have some Mango lassi at the end but there were no room for it.

As far as the place is concerned, it looked elegant, I loved the decor and the spaciousness of the place. Everything was clean and the service was really good. I am not sure if that biryani is a one-off blunder hopefully it was becuase that single let down can take down the whole experience.

FIANCE RESTAURANT
Address: 261 Gladstone Road, Gisborne 4010, New Zealand
Phone: +646 214 3996
Website: https://fiancerestaurant.co.nz/