I think I’ve found my new favorite restaurant, by accident ! On driving down Seaview road in Waiheke in the evening last week, I saw out the corner of my eye a glass structure on the side of the hill over looking a vineyard in the sunset. This was the beginning of the culinary love affair.
Googled Casita Miro that night, first date was lunch the next day. I could rave on about every dish we had, but why spoil the surprise ! lets just say that I booked for dinner the next night and took more friends along who were equally smitten t !
This place is the whole deal, the setting, the building, the food, the wine, the staff, all top notch, I’m giving it an overall 15 out of 10
Do ya self a flavor and go there, as lunch and dinner offer a whole different visual experience, best you find a place to stay overnight and do both.
You wont regret it

No response to on-line request for reservation made the day before.
No response to telephone call asking about reservation (just got an answering machine).
Turned up hoping there might be room (we were a party of 6) and found they were expecting us.
So poor organization if you want to rely on making a reservation.

Once we there the food and service was excellent.

The only beer was Waiheke’s own Baroona pale ale which went well with the tajin. The rose wine was also good. Advertised as “low alcohol” it was 11.5% v/v which is barely different from any other wine.

Restaurant situated in a fabulous location.Entrance is typically Spanish- imposing iron and glass doors leading into a large cheery open room. A long island counter where you can sit for a drink and tapas. Room has wooden floors and a high vaulted ceiling so noise does reverberate around the room once a few wines have been had, by late night patrons!
Tapas are really tasty, good to share – most between four, but staff will advise you.The roasted stuffed pepper was to die for. Main course – we had the lamb on couscous, chicken with beans, swiss chard and a salad. Lamb tender and succulent; Chicken – a very generous portion but not alot of meat in the dish. tasty though. Couldn’t fit a dessert in! Overall a relaxed, homely and tasty meal. Staff very helpful and friendly-the antithesis of another well known winery, with mud in its name, !

Really disappointed with our lunch today, predominantly with the service. We had been a number of times to this restaurant and found it small and cozy, somewhat quirky but always friendly. Today was my birthday and we were settling in for a nice lunch. However one of our dishes was different to the menu and I couldn’t eat it. Instead of offering to replace it they said I had to order something else, as if I was going to spend more money with that attitude! Ironically they didn’t come back to the table for 20minutes anyway. Thus lunch ended up being$80 bread and potatoes – rip! We left and probably won’t go back, will have to find another local…

We had a birthday celebration at Casita Miro, We did the 4 course chefs choice which was fantastic. The only thing I would have changed was the mixed seafood for the main. Although most of us loved it, when you have a group of nine people you are bound to find some that are not so keen on Seafood but happy to have seafood as a smaller course but not as a main for so many.
The staff were amazing, very friendly,helpful and a great sense of fun. We will definitely be back – again..

Nice location, okay food but totally over prized !!

Today we went with a number of friends to Waiheke Island and had lunch at Casito Miro. The service was quite good and quick, the food was alright but not heavenly good and the portions were so small for the price asked that we could hardly believe it.
For a mixed Tapas menu consisting of 5 different but pretty minimalistic dishes we paid a sky rocketing price of $55 each without drinks, not to mention the 18% surplus for the public holiday. When the bill came for the 5 of us, who shared 3 of those tiny tapas menus, without desserts, but with 2 bottles of wine we had a truly shocking bill of almost $340, what is, as I think for both the quality and the size of portions fairly over prized. Don’t go there hungry !
Reading all the enthusiastic critics about this place I tend to believe that people went to another restaurant?

I had 17 people here for my 40th Birthday, it was FANTASTIC, the food was just devine, all herbs etc fresh from the garden, the staff fab and Kat the owner was fantastic, they couldn’t do enough for us. It really made my weekend of celebrating a wonderful experience on Waiheke Island. The actual building was rustic and just gorgeous very homely and warm…..Highly recommend and would return in a flash!! Thanks so much.

I agree with the previous reviewer. The setting great but it sets itself up as rustic tapas restaurant but charges exorbitant prices for what you get. The food was fine but $18.50 for 3 small croquettes in a glass is a joke. That is around $6 a croquette and they were just served with a bit of mustard aioli so it is really is $6 a croquette. The Mezze bar has been doing similar style tapas for years that are just as good (if not better) with more generous servings and priced far more reasonably. Also my partner had a homemade grape juice for $8 which was nice but had a heavy sediment at the bottom which could easily have been strained out as it was not pleasant. I was also disappointed not to be able to taste a selection of the wines from the vineyard without paying around $6 for a taste of each wine. Finally when we ordered we were told there would be about a 15min wait. We said that was fine however it was more like a 30-40 min wait and we had already been waiting a good 15 mins or more before we were told that one of the tapas we had ordered was not available. That is too long to wait for two small tapas. Pity I would love to go back for the location and the food did actually taste good was just way overpriced.

We found this Spanish restaurant disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, the building and setting are beautiful, however, as far as Spanish tapas go this place is average. The tapas are small, expensive and not very exciting. We started with a cocktail which was $18 which is higher than the French Cafe and was mostly ice and soda water. We ordered a mushroom dish, again almost $20 which consisted of three button mushrooms. 3 mushrooms the size of 20c pieces!!! with a cube of cheese on each. We asked if this was a joke and the took it off our bill. The other dishes were small and weren’t a patch on anything you’d get in a Tapas bar in Spain. We won’t be back.

Truly lovely setting and service is great, worth 5 stars. Food could be improved and brings it down to 4. Wouldn’t hesitate to come back though, great place to bring friends for lively atmosphere and good times.

Wow, this place is definitely one to visit. The most delightful dining experience with friends set amongst olive tree’s and vines giving you that feeling that you are on a Spanish hillside halfway around the world.

The menu was extensive and while i would normally play it safe we all decided to put our trust in the chef with ordering the chef’s choice. We definitely weren’t disappointed. The dishes were explained in detail when served and each had its unique flavour and were the talking points for days, esp the bread and the caramelised walnuts which really should be bottled and sold as these were just delicious and worth a trip to Waiheke in itself. All accompained by a few glasses of the full bodied 2005 Archipelago. Excellent.

Thank you for making our long awaited girls lunch out so relaxed, friendly and memorable. We look forward to returning soon.

went with a big group recently unsure whether it was due to this or not but I wasn’t that impressed with the food. The bread and dips were lovely as were the oysters but that’s where it ended really, the hot food was totally unremarkable, the potato dish with chorizo was bland and uninspiring, the meatballs well none of us could figure out the meat used as the taste was so strange, it reminded me of steak and kidney pie and then we were told it was pork! besides that they were dry. The beef sweet Moroccan dish was quite unusual. All in all very average, though the views were stunning.

went to casita miro on fathers day with my husband and my little girl for lunch. we have read about this place in one of the brochures we got on the ferry terminal. sounded amazing. must say that i was very disappointed! the food is highly up-there with small tapa size for a minimum of $22.50, hardly to satisfy one grown up. we have ordered two tapas – only after 10 minutes did the waitress came back to tell us that the dishes we have ordered are no longer available. we had to get something completely different as we were so hungry by that time. when we came to pay the bill, the waitress that served us told us that we won’t be charged for the extra bread we have ordered (we were quite hungry as you can imagine), but yet we were charged for it and we had realized that half way back to auckland. overall, very dissapointing. paid $85 for lunch for two and were still hungry.

Time for some “just us” time said The Beloved.
Somewhere beautiful, romantic, peaceful and not too far away. With good restaurants and great picnic spots.

Waiheke was a brilliant choice. We were blessed with gorgeous weather and the chance to try Casita Miro for lunch. Had heard good things from Waiheke based friends.

It’s a slightly quirky, casually elegant, high ceilinged glass walled room, tucked in to the side of the hill with olive groves behind and views down the vine covered valley to the sea.
Perfect.

The greeting was warm, service faultless and one of the owners, the charming Cat Vosper, stopped by our table to chat.

We matched our tapas with Miro wines although other wines are available, and loved the Viognier in particular.

The food? Spanish Mediterranean tapas.
An emphasis on what is fresh and local.

Excellent bread, baked on site, well flavoured tapas, the scallops in saffron butter sauce are worth making the boat trip for. A dish of prawns almost rivalled them.
The beef in a spicy, mysterious Moroccan sauce was heady and delish but the highlight was the dessert of beautifully sweetened grilled figs with a glass of their delicious Madame Rouge.

Get there. It’s a gem.

I live on Waiheke and always bring guests I want to impress to Casita Miro. The food is imaginative and scrumptious – the chef seems to have a way of creating food that satisfies your culinary sense of adventure and your taste buds in one brilliant coup. A dip made of roast carrot, parsnip, feta and sundried tomatoes? Not my first thought of a delightful combo – but DAMN! Not to mention the wicked Lamb and Fig Tagine – lucky the plates don’t have patterns on them or I would have scraped them off using that gorgeous home-made foccacia… The service is peerless – Cat is a wonderful hostess and I really recommend you TRUST the woman by ordering a chef’s special. You’ll be surprised and delighted every time.

We went here yesterday and I was so disappointed that I have been looking for an opportunity to comment. We eat out regularly and consider ourselves reasonably knowledgeable about good food.
3 of us turned up with out a booking and ordered the Chefs selection for $38.00 per person. We were given 1 entree dish of dips, olive oil(horrible) and wonderful bread. This was followed by 4 small tapas plates of a potato dish, a ratatouille type dish, mushrooms and a beef dish cooked with prunes. There was sufficient, but not generous quantity, for us and we are not big eaters. But two cubes of beef and some veges (however well done and they were nice enough, except for the potatoes with chirizo, which was heavy on waxy potatoe and only had about 4 slices of mild chorizo) is hardly great value.
Before we left the table we asked if we had had all the dishes. I mentioned to our pleasant enough waitress that we didn’t think we had had particularly good value. She had to check what we had been served and speak to the chef. No that was it! The person who took our money seemed extremely surprised and asked if we hadn’t had enough food. It wasn’t the quantity that upset us, although we were hardly groaning with food ( as he said most people do), but the sheer ordinariness of the food, no seafood dish, and that there wasn’t a sweet dish included. We had room for it! I gave my feed back in good faith, but it was received very dismissively and with disbelief. The surroundings are rather nice, as was our wait person, although she was difficult to hear because it was very noisy and kept creeping up on my left. She also had no idea what was in the very unusually flavoured beef dish and had to ask.
I just don’t get the rave reviews as this was not even close to our experience. I certainly have higher expectations regarding food, quality ingredients, quantity and service of a $38.00 lunch, or dinner for that matter.

I have now been to Casita Miro several times, the last time was on New Years eve, and have yet to leave without a huge smile on my face. I just love the food they do there and in particular the Moroccan lamb and beef – I have even tried without success to convince them to give me the recipe. Excellent wines, food and delightful service make this my favourite place on the island.

Really nice food but very salty…..be nice if you fixed this, as otherwise we loved your place and would make it a regular.

This was our first visit since the change of chef and we were not disappointed. We took a group of fifteen friends following a morning at the Headland Sculpture exhibition. We were all hungry and took their suggestion that we opt for the “Chefs Choice”. We were treated to a mouthwatering parade of tapas that were plentiful,creative and simply divine! Washed down with the vineyard Rose in a setting reminiscent of Tuscany. No wonder our friends have not stopped raving about it!

Our second lunch time visit to Casita Miro and consistently excellent. We were overwhelmed for choice of the Tapas style dishes and elected to go for the Chef’s choice. This proved to be a great decision although one would not need to have had a late breakfast as the dishes were plentiful. Casita Miro’s Bordeaux style wine as part of the Chef’s Choice menu option was a perfect match. Attentive but not obtrusive service and the Mediterranean atmosphere ensures this a must when we return.

Fabulous food, great staff, superb wine & a convivial but laid back ambiance, so glad we chose this vineyard after checking out several on the island. A real gem.