Baha Betty (New Market, Auckland, New Zealand)

At the top of Westfield Newmarket Shopping Centre is this Rooftop Dining Precinct where you can enjoy the sunset views, nice garden terraces, a sky pool and artworks dotted around Westfield Newmarket’s rooftop as you enjoy your food and drinks. We wanted to try this before but never had the change until now. There are many options to choose from here which can be confusing, luckily during this first visit, it was a catchup with our community friends, and they already identified to have it at Baha Betty.

Baha Betty as their site describes it “is a casual eclectic Californian-Baja eatery catering to a wide demographic”, it also says “a lunch and dinner experience that blends cross boarder influences of San Diego and Baja California. The beverage menu is a blend of local and Cali-Baja influences including non-alcoholic beverages, wine, eclectic classical cocktails, and NZ tap beer.”. Sounds promising, let’s find it out.

It was very busy when we visited this place, luckily, we have a booking so we don’t have to wait. It was indeed a vibrant place, well styled and the atmosphere was amazing. Upon checking the menu, most of their offering are good beer matches but not your typical pub food, so you have food items like Nachos, Ribs and Wings, Burgers, Po Buoys, Tacos and Quesadillas.

We tried several things starting with Calamari (NZ$20.00) served with preserved chilli, apricot chamoy and cane sugar. At first glance, they look good but to be frank this was probably the worst calamari I tried, squid was undercooked, the crispy coating does slides out of the squid like a loose hip hop shirt and to add to the that each piece were served in large chunks, so there is no pretty way eating them, it’s either you eat them whole and choke or bite sections of the squid while every breading falls apart. To top it all off, it is oily, the only good thing about this is that the sauce tastes good.

Now let us go to the next item Sirloin Steak Quesadilla (NZ$21.00), prepared with griddle cooked flour tortilla with cheese, mole sauce, queso fresco, caramelized onion, and bell peppers. This was OK, tastes OK, presentation was OK. Meat was seasoned well but it was a bit chewy, the quesadilla looked more like a soft Taco than a quesadilla, it’s also nearly the same size as well. Overall this quesadilla was just average.

Then we also have a Lobster Po Buoy (NZ$28.00), garlic buttered torpedo roll with kettle crisps, calamari, celery cress and thousand island. This one was my favourite from this batch, light rolls and well seasoned fillings, it was great but there are much more better and cheaper options if you are craving for a Po Boy.

As for drinks they have tons of selection, from taps to bottled ones, I usually grab the ones of taps as they taste crispier and fresher.

So definitely atmosphere is nice, during our last visit here it felt like a normal weekend before COVID-19 happened but it was Thursday and still in Orange Traffic Light System. People seem to have fun here, most probably of the fun juice more than anything else, because the food, sad to say was not as good as I expected it to be plus it is expensive too.

Baha Betty
Address: Westfield Newmarket Level 4, Broadway, Newmarket, Auckland 1141, New Zealand
Phone: +649 520 0002
Website: https://www.bahabetty.co.nz/