Hi Cheryl,

Thanks for the great review, glad you enjoyed your night at Dragonfly.

The wine you were drinking was the Gisselbrecht Alsace Pinot Gris, which you can purchase from Glengarry. It’s a fantastic wine.

Regards
Brent

Hi Biggie C

As discussed through a private message

Thanks for taking the time to review Dragonfly.

Fridays are one of our busier days and the weekend you came in was a very busy Friday, with WOW on and our mention in the Best of Wellington Capital Times awards. So I feel we pushed our limits, with the staffing we had rostered. We are looking at this very closely to ensure we keep a consistently fantastic level of service at all times.

We are still in our first year of operation and so we are still learning, how different events effect our business. In saying that, how busy we are should not effect our customers experience. But in your case I fell it did.

I am looking forward to meeting you when you get back from your trip, to show you how the platter should have been.

Regards

Brent

Dear Bridget,

My name is Brent I am one of the owners of Dragonfly.

I am very disappointed you felt this way about your experience. We do not take it lightly when guests leave Dragonfly feeling this way.

On Saturday evening I was the manager on duty and the person who took your payment at the very end. As I always do, I asked how the meal was and was given a short but truthful answer of not very good at all. I could see your group did not want to discuss the experience so I did not press any further. So I am glad to have this chance to reply to you.

To give you some insight into our night, we had 3 staff unable to make it to work and therefore we had to be a little imaginative with how we used the people we had as we were already almost fully booked with 2 sittings.

We served 130 people for dinner that night, a lot as we only seat 55 at any one time in the main dining area. We used many tables several times. On a Friday and Saturday night at Dragonfly this is not un-common but none of this should impact on your dining experience. Although I feel it may have on this occasion.

On Fridays and Saturday nights we do have a designated Matire’d. Their role is to meet and greet customers, taking them to allocated tables, finding them a table if they have not booked and also directing to the bar area, while taking payments. Your 8pm arrival time is the busiest time of the night for the Matire’d, with first sitting guests, guests leaving, bill payments, second sitting guests arriving and bringing people through from the bar to their tables. So, like any busy restaurant, they cannot be at the desk all of the time. Often the floor staff will help seat guests, which is what happened in your case.

I have spoken to the waiter that served you on the night and he did say that you were not given water straight away, which is one of our standards. Also, that you did not even have water glasses when he came to the table, which he apologized for and remedy straight away. This was a simple error during reset from the first sitting.

He did not notice that your table was unhappy apart from the Angus Beef Curry, which he took away and had the dish corrected. This may have been a little bit of inexperience on his behalf, but if we do not know something is wrong then we cannot fix it.

The Angus Beef Curry uses short rib, as outlined in the description, which is why there are bones in the dish. Leaving the bones in the dish during the cooking process adds flavour and it is very traditional in Asian cooking to serve dishes with the bones. The dish being luke warm is inexcusable. And I apologise for this, but we did replace the dish.

The Free Range Chicken is a popular dish, it being tough, sounds that it was over cooked, if we had known this we could have fixed the problem. Or replaced the dish with something else.

We noticed that you also had the Pork and Prawn, but have not mentioned this, so I have assumed that this dish was to your satisfaction.

At Dragonfly our focus is on using high quality ingredients such as Angus Beef Short Rib, Free Range Chicken, Pork and Eggs, fresh Asian herbs, Organic vegetables, milk and cream to name a few. We also produce as many of our sauces, marinades, glazes, curry bases and fillings in house as possible, again to ensure quality and so we know what actually goes into our product.

This is unlike many other Asian restaurants that use the cheapest cuts of meat, vegetables and buy in all their sauces and curry bases. We do this as we feel it adds a huge amount of flavour and quality to the food. This does mean our prices a little higher than some other Asian restaurants, but not all. We have done and continue to do a large amount of Market research to ensure we are pitching our product at the right price. Our product is also made up of the environment, food quality, and the service.

After your table left I was concerned that there had been something happening I was not aware of in the section of the restaurant you were dining in. So when the table that was sitting next to you came to pay, I spoke with them in some depth about their evening and their experience. They were also a table of 4, which arrived at 7pm and left sometime after 11pm, they could not fault the food or the service.

So I am lead to believe your experience could have been the sum of a string of unfortunate events. Or something else happened which I was not aware of.

As you booked I have your phone number and was going to call you to discuss your experience, but as you brought the matter into the online forum I thought I should reply in the open as well. I have sent you my contact details through a private message on MenuMania, as I would like the opportunity to discuss this with you in person.

I am concerned that you have now posted the same review on both Dineout and MenuMania, with a small change of us “flying on the coat tails of current Asian fusion” to “flying on the coat tails of Ancestral”. MenuMania also links to wellingtonnz.com. And another of your group has post a similar review on trip advisor.

All of these reviews are first time reviews and it takes some effort to setup three separate accounts and post these reviews. So I do feel as if there is some other agenda than giving the public your review of a night out at Dragonfly.

I look forward to your call and the opportunity to discuss these matters with you in person.

Regards

Brent
Dragonfly.

Hi Isobel.

I am very sorry we were not up to our normal standards. We are very busy and in the last few weeks have been caught off guard with a few times, with how busy we have been.

Some nights being twice as busy as the weeks before.

We are constantly looking at ways to improve our service, speed and quality of food and drink.

Thanks for taking the time to give feed back

Regards

Brent

Hi Paula

Thanks for the comments, since your visit we have made further adjustments to our temporary canopy, you are correct it is not ideal, but we are working on a permanent solution, which includes a fence to hide the dirty brick wall. We have also just installed heating as well. For the service we have made changes and will continue to work on improving this.

Hi Crystal

Thanks for taking the time to review Dragonfly, we are a new business and we are working hard to work get everything just right. Since your review we have made several changes to improve the service and the integration between the bar courtyard and restaurant.