Westfield St Lukes Shopping Centre,
80 St Lukes Road,
St Lukes
Auckland,


(09) 815 3333 

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2 out of 5

First off, the portraits on the wall are hilarious: the artist obviously couldn’t do fair hair, so Sarah Ulmer has a tight Afro; and Sir Peter Blake, a Beatle-cut. Dame Whina Cooper has one mad staring eye bigger than the other; and Ernest Rutherford looks like a young Jeremy Coney.

Still, the portraits of movie stars in the nearby cinema complex sometimes take a bit of second guessing also.

It is before, or after, the movies that people go to Moa’s Nest in Westfield St Lukes Shopping Centre.

A kind of Kiwi-kitsch place which hasn’t quite decided what it wants to be, it has a big screen bar at one end (for sports or Desperate Housewives); the toilets are marked “chicks” and “dudes”; it has quiz nights; a décor which ranges from those weird paintings to booze posters and old junkshop stuff; and then a sort of Cobb and Co feel to its restaurant.

At least when it was formerly the English-style pub, it had some cohesion.

No matter. Those chowing down on burgers, the enormous beer-battered fish’n’chips which I have seen defeat very big people, the uninspired nachos—and so on—are only there for what we in this country charmingly call “a feed”.

Aside from recommending the bizarre art, I am going to put a good word in for something it does fairly well: the pan-fried fish of the day and roast vegetables is excellent if, at $23.50, a bit over-priced.

You can keep the stodgy nachos and the steaks (which are priced at a whopping $24.95), but with a glass of Delegats chardonnay ($6.50) the fish is worth checking out.