The Tasting Shed

This is a very lovely restaurant that we were lucky to stumble across by accident. Since it is not in central Auckland and little «out of town», many people might not be familiar with it.
The atmosphere has a rustic, country feel to it which is very fitting with the surroundings. The menu is not very large which I’m all about if what is on the menu is done right. There are several choices each: seafood, meat and vegetables. It was four of us and we all ordered different items, all of which were delicious. It is suppose to be tapas or sharing, and we waitresses recommended we order between 7 – 8 items, but each of us got a main and 2 vegetables for the table and were more than enough. I think the menu is seasonal so I’m not going to list what we had since it might not be there for your visit.
It is not a cheap place necessarily, but it would be a great place for a nice occasion or a relaxing good meal.

Arriving at the Tasting Shed is like arriving at some exclusive retreat and really cute at sunset. A small Wedding Reception was set up in the Conservatory when we arrived, what a perfect location for it.
The huge blackboards of the rustic Tasting Shed dining room display the menu, with lots of rustic fare.
We ordered a bit of everything for our group of 10 to share, such as Beef cheek and the Pork belly with the tasty purée and celery slaw were our favourites. The veges were also good, thai curry pumpkin and the plate of green beans shows no restraint with chunks of nuts and a peanut satay dressing.
Sweet ricotta doughnuts served with quince caramel and poached pear segments and a goat’s milk curd had some swooning. The lemon meringue cone was quaint. I found the Chocolate Valrhona disappointing in presentation and substance and I’ve tasted way better salted caramel ice cream bought from Nosh.
I would say the only fault I really had was the lack of service, the plates not being cleared in a timely manner, empty glasses several times through the evening and no offer of replenishment. We had to ask to order dessert. I wasn’t told there was a Wedding when I made my group booking and I think that was more important than us. Paying also was difficult but also not mention of rules for a group under 12 when I booked.

Wheels crunching up the gravel, the Tasting Shed looked sophisticated in black. Dining tables that spilled out into the outdoor area are wrapped by the wind + rain proof outdoor gazebo.
Everything about it oozed warm comfort and rustic charm. You wouldn’t hear the quiet clinking of cutlery on plates and humble conversation here. It was a strict «no-​tablecloths» restaurant. And these beautiful wooden tables probably take 5 times more work to maintain.
My after-​work brain probably took more time than necessary to figure out what the bobbles meant on the Savory to Sweet scale on the menu. With 25 items on the menu (including dessert), it was difficult to nail down what to order. We were advised to order 4 to 5 dishes because they were all entrée sizes.
Watermelon — smoked olive, goats cheese, baby ganoush
This was one surprising combination. I’ve always been one to systematically eat my way through my plate because I didn’t like mixing things together. Give me a fruit and cheese platter, I’d eat each individually. But this is something you’d want to pile a bit of each onto your fork. The watermelon and goats cheese blend beautifully into a creamy smoothie in your mouth. Rich and cooling at the same time — it’s a weird sensation.
Venison — carpaccio, mushrooms, beets, juniper, walnuts
This is a great well-​thought out dish with plenty to leave you taste testing, tilting your head and thinking. It was called the Venison dish, and with so much going on, the venison was the solid foundation to bring out the flavours of each ingredient. The sweet tang and slick texture of the mushrooms was paired with the crunch of the walnut and hokey-​pokey chunks. We had fun melting the walnut powder on our tongues and poking at the different elements on the dish. The hokey pokey was not your average golden syrup variety but was made with beetroot juice — so even with this explosion of textures, everything blends together.
After a mini degustation, one shared sweet dessert was enough! The rosewater was not an understatement — the scent was clear, and sweet, followed by an even sweeter strawberry parfait. It had a subtle summer breeze to this dish and the strawberry parfait an excellent substitute for your average ice cream. The saffron leaves a distinct after taste and cures the dish from being too sweet.
With the popularity of restaurants that let you put elbows on tables, tablecloths are stripped away to make way for our laid-​back Kiwi culture. If you’re looking for a sweet candle-​lit dinner, there’s other fine-​dining restaurants in Auckland CBD. But I’m loving this fusion of casual and fine at The Tasting Shed. The service doesn’t make you feel like you’re a VIP but more like your host that invited you to their house for dinner. So if you’re looking for an excuse out of the city, make this your first stop!

* I’m not usually into tapas style places, but this place is pretty good. All the things we tried were tasty
* Bit pricey though…
* There you go, done in two bullet points
* Well, three, sorry four…

On a trip to Muriwai to see the Gannet colony, we stopped in to The Tasting Shed to get lunch on the way home. It seems to be a gem in the area — and from what I could tell was the only place that wasn’t a café/​fish and chips type place or a super expensive winery restaurant. It fit nicely in the middle.
That’s not to say that the Tasting Shed is cheap. I’d give this place 5 stars, but I have a hard time with full plate prices for small plates. Ideally tapas restaurants shouldn’t charge more than $ 10 for a plate, unless the ingredients are especially pricey (truffle oil, seafood, etc). $ 12 for a small plate of (admittedly delicious) potatoes? That seems over the top.
The atmosphere and the food are very very good. We’re vegetarian (though I did slip and try the market fish), so we stuck mostly to the veggie options. Everything seemed very fresh, and inventively prepared. My favorite was the pumpkin in coconut curry sauce. I could have eaten 3 plates of that myself. Unfortunately, I had to share. The asparagus was nice, but I was sad that there weren’t grapefruit chunks with it as I had envisioned from the description (not really sure where the grapefruit fit in to the equation, it was not apparent).
The market fish — I forget what type it was — was amazing. Crispy, tender, and fresh all at once with some fresh veggie side and chunks of fresh mozzarella. Very good.
All the sauces were super yummy, and we found ourselves dipping the potatoes in all the sauces from our plates. If you get the bread, don’t let them take the delicious olive oil away when you finish — you just might want it to go with a later item. Or eat it by itself with a spoon. Not that I did that. I promise. Really.
I had a fantastic glass of Stonecroft Sav Blanc, and I appreciated that they let me taste a few before I settled on that.
To finish, I got the salted caramel ice cream. Salted caramel on anything is my absolute favorite, and the ice cream did not disappoint. It wasn’t overly sweet (sounds weird, but ice cream can be cloyingly sweet sometimes), and the caramel flavor was perfect. The cone (homemade I assume) was also excellent.
The atmosphere was awesome — we sadly sat in the shed because they weren’t serving the full menu outside. The shed is open to the fresh air, so you do get a nice view of the lawn. The lawn and gardens are quite lovely with orange trees, a very friendly dog wandering around. Nice festive but laid back weekend atmosphere. Highly recommend, but be ready to spend some $$$ to go home full.

Excellent restaurant. NZ at its best. Lovely staff, delicious, inventive food. One of my all time favourites.

Had a very good evening here with a group of friends. A lot more fun if the people you go with are willing to be a bit adventurous. We tried a bit of everything, and surprisingly I enjoyed the vegetarian plates more than the meat dishes. Some things were a bit on the bland side, some others slightly overwrought (and my first choice Spanish wine wasn’t available, but the replacement was excellent). Dogs playing out on the grass, it was an excellent summer evening. Service good, knowledgeable, helpful. Nice for a bit of an excursion.

The Tasting Shed is on my list of places to head when I have visitors from overseas looking for a bit of entertainment. Taking a group of people out of the city and into Kumeu is a great experience, particularly for city-​slicking yanks who haven’t seen trees in this quantity outside of the movies (which are generally filmed in New Zealand anyway!)
Despite its rural location, The Tasting Shed can get quite bustling, especially on weekends. They may be busy but the staff are very lovely and welcoming, and very helpful when showing you the best spot to sit. The first time we went there, we were set up under some lovely trees with blankets and cartons that the restaurant uses as tables. We grabbed a whole bunch of small plates and were really happy with how they all looked sitting on our little makeshift table! Snapper, meatballs, delightful breads and oils, prawns — the array of well crafted and presented food was too much to just stare at, so we downed the lot very, VERY quickly — all with the help of our friend Rose.