Bracu Restaurant

I love everything about this place. Sure, it is not a central location, but the drive is well worth it. We came here on a beautiful Saturday afternoon for a set menu lunch. We started with the bread and olive oil for the table and I must say it was some of the best bread I have had. I would go back just to sit in the sun and eat the bread. The rest of menu was seasonal, and given that beats are in season the menu was beat heavy. The dishes were innovative, prepared with great care to compliment the flavors. The drinks menu is great as well, as it has a large selection of wine both by the glass and bottled.
I would definitely recommend this place if you have a special occasion or if you just want to go for a beautiful meal.

Food was superb, every dish was full of unique flavours and cooked superbly. Service and knowledge of the staff was first rate

Visited on a Saturday for lunch as a birthday treat for my dad. We sat on the veranda looking out into the olive grove.
Beautiful venue, amazing food. Service was attentive, but not intrusive.
A little but on the pricey side, but worth it!
We’ll be back!!!

What a delightful setting. And the food was very good too.
It’s really far out of anywhere, and yet that is a big part of the charm. It was a nice day, so we opted to sit on the terrace, overlooking the garden and olive trees.
We came for Sunday brunch, and we arrived a few minutes before 12 to beat the rush.
The warm complimentary bread and dip was a nice touch to start the meal. While my wife wanted eggs, she opted for the crayfish omelette, $ 22, which she enjoyed. My lamb rump, $ 39, was a n adequate amount of meat, and the taste was good. See photos. Glasses of wine were a very generous pour, and yet at $ 18/​gl you’d expect that.

We did the degustation menu for our anniversary treat and the food was amazing.
We combined it with the wine pairings which were well selected and delicious.
Each course was amazing in the detail and the taste. For myself the amount of food was just right, but each course was small and some might not find it enough, but I did note that the regular menu items where of a good size that would have satisfied most.
The setting is just idyllic — we were seated on the terrace among the olive trees and it was relaxing, classy and special. The service was great as was the food quality.
It is on the higher price side and for us that means it will be a special occasion place, but we will keep coming back for sure!

Delicious nouvelle cuisine in a beautiful restaurant set in a fine olive estate. You could easily feel that you’re in a choice locale of French countryside. Lovers — you have a real beaut awaiting you! The drive adds to the build-​up and then leads you to excellently fresh oysters, a rare Tuna rendition that hits all the delightful notes, and a little sphere that superbly blends pheasant with chestnut. Service is politely passable. Lamb here becomes more pleasurable when mixed with the character of those «wild grains», rendered tubers, a textbook red sauce and a flick of date purée. Finisher — gorgeously baked passionfruit soufflé — the top rising like powdered cloud and its body seguing into warm molten goodness. At $ 85 for 7 courses per person, Chef Mikey Newland’s Bracu is outstanding value for money. 3.5 stars out of 5 (a unique Kiwi-​French experience) Photos —

Absolutely love this place! Great food, great staff and exceptional location. Always leave smiling!

Stunning place for brunch or degustation dinner. Beautiful place to walk around and the staff are always incredibly friendly, knowledgable and attentive. Very worth the drive. Great place for a special occasion. Just went for a catch up brunch with family after a year away. Eggs Benny on hash browns blew my mind. Mixed grill was also very generous and breakfast cocktails were great!

Bracu left me a bit perplexed, really. Overall, the experience was a good one, but I felt the whole time like there was just a couple of areas where they just hadn’t judged the tone right, which slightly took away from the night.
The positives
— The location! yes, it’s forty minutes from CBD, but it’s kind of exciting to go on a bit of an adventure. It’s worth it when you arrive– even the carpark is beautiful! The building, the olive trees, it’s all really lovely
— the food is great. We were really happy with our meals, though my main (the spring chicken with crayfish dumpling) brushed slightly too close to the ‘look how many interesting flavours we can combine into one dish’ territory for me to order it next time. The olive oil, unsurprisingly, was amazing, and the complimentary breads and oil was a nice touch.
The slightly less positive
— the music! It has to be noted that this is a pricey restaurant. We’re talking $ 39 mains. With that in mind, the choice of music was totally bizarre — we were listening to a range of easy listening hits from the 80s, 90s and today (including a couple of my faves from the 90s that I’d forgotten existed, so maybe a positive after all…). But while easy listening music is appropriate in some restaurants, it really took away from the ‘fine dining’ experience that the food/​location/​prices seem to be trying to achieve
— the waitstaff. The staff that served us were really friendly, and did their job well, but again weren’t quite in line with the ‘fine dining’ experience that we’d expected. That said, it did mean you could relax a bit more than perhaps you can in another ‘flash’ restaurant.
So, overall it still gets 4 stars for the location and food, but I do think Bracu could do well to work out what identity they’re aiming for, and to bring the food/​prices and the staff/​music in line with each other.

We have been to Bracu several times. The location is fabulous, whether it be for a leisurely weekend lunch or evening dinner. It’s a good place to take visitors for something special.
Bracu’s location is gorgeous. It’s a good 40 minute drive from Auckland, quite easy to find, about 5 minutes drive to the east of the Bombay exit of the southern motorway. Don’t plan to go there if you’re in a hurry or have a plane to catch. This is a place you come to for a leisurely meal. Bracu is on the periphery of an olive plantation. The other business here, seemingly run by the Simunovich family, produces olive oil and skincare goods (
). You can stock up on any of their products from the range displayed, conveniently, in the Bracu foyer.
The restaurant is lovely, with a classy feel to it. On a beautiful sunny day you can sit on the deck surrounded by the olive orchard. At night, the deck is closed in by those heavy plastic blinds. It is romantically lit and feels very special.
The food at Bracu is generally consistently good. The chefs are chefs — not cooks — always looking for new and innovative ways to serve their dishes and they don’t often disappoint. For this reason, if you are a picky eater, like your food covered in tomato sauce or have lived your life under a rock, don’t bother to go to Bracu. Seriously, eating good food in top restaurants should be like an exciting adventure on which you can discover new heights of culinary pleasure around each corner of the menu.
Having said all that, I am sad to say that the waiting staff at Bracu are not so great. Bracu seems to have trouble finding and keeping great waiting staff who really know how to give a high standard of service. Teenagers doing a bit of waitressing for pocket money just don’t cut it in a restaurant wanting to be taken seriously. A great waiter is worth their weight in gold. I really love to receive good service. There is something beautiful about a great waiter who knows how to make a customer feel special. When I am paying, I want to be treated well. And I will happily tip big bucks to a waiter who makes my meal memorable in a positive way! Sadly it doesn’t happen that often at Bracu. Often it’s just the small things like a laissez faire attitude, not topping up the water on the table, and omitting to clear away used cutlery/​crockery. More than once though, we have been left alone for what seemed like hours when we wanted to order more wine or were ready for dessert etc. I hate to diss a place like this when I know they are really trying hard to be a top notch eatery, but they are really let down by their staff who sometimes appear not to give a damn.
Sadly, good service, a standard of excellence, attention to detail, a pleasant, happy demeanour and caring attitude and a desire to do a job to the very best of one’s ability, are all things that are disappearing in this day and age.
But that aside, definitely take a trip to Bracu. I truly hope you strike it on a good day. You just might be pleasantly surprised,

There’s a possiblity I have a bias towards Bracu, on account of the fact of my Croatian heritage. I love going out to Bracu’s olive estate to see the hard work the Simunovich family put in to create the vast expanse of olive trees that make up their beautiful plot of land.
Nestled in amongst this amazing vista is Bracu, one of Auckland’s most remote but most fantastic restaurants. I have been here a number of times for functions and really enjoyed the set menu, but have also travelled out to Bombay for a lunch, where I really enjoyed their roasted market fish with green herbs, olives and vegetables. It’s so nice to take in the view, eat an amazing meal and sip on a beautiful glass of wine.