My husband and I are in love with european cuisine and italian and french is on the top list.

Google helped me find this beautiful place and I manage to convinced my hubby to take me there for a dinner.

What a warm welcome. We both are so delighted by the service and the food. It is definately a very classy, elegant and a warm place.

I would love to go there again and recommend it to a couple for a pleasant meal.

I just couldn’t resist writing this review after a great meal i had last night.
Only if this review can explain how satisfied i am with the service, the food, the atmosphere and the music.
10 outta 10 is what i would say.

Every time i would walk from Britomart to my work, this beautiful logo of SPAGO catches my eye. So just after i finish my work my friend and i decided to go there for dinner.

The place is so elegant yet very stylish. Atmosphere is so soothing, especially after a long day at work.

Talking about the food, I had gnocchi and the taste is still stuck in my mind, what a nice presentation, you know how they say, its the eye who eats the first, they said it so right and Spago just proved it to me.

The pricing is very affordable.
I would recommend it for anyone who’s into food. Beautiful Food!

Highly recommended!

Our lunch time ‘chill out’ restaurant.
David is a wonderful host, the chairs are very comfy, the wine is reasonably priced, the food is good.
Definitely recommended.

The menu was quite exciting, food was okay, nothing special but a solid meal. Nice portions, you can choose from an entree or main size. Our waiter was extremely attentive and efficient. Really lovely atmosphere, would be great for gatherings and parties. Spago is pretty reasonable for the prices of similar restaurants too so we’d definitely go back.

Over the past month I have regularly popped into Spago with a girlfriend of mine who lives near by for a coffee or glass of wine. The atmosphere is great, coffee/wine fantastic and the waiters now recognise us as regulars and are always happy to see us and cater to our needs.

After a while of coffees and wine we decided that we should try a meal and were definitely pleased with our choices. I had a pizza which had some of the hottest chillies on it that I have had in a long time (as a chillie lover that is a good thing!!). All up for two people entres, mains, a nice bottle of wine and some coffee to finish off for just over $100 I thought was pretty good value for money. I will continue to be a regular!

Get over yourself Auckland.
Like most I have travelled extensively and definitely indulged in Italian food in Italian restaurants in Italy.
I have dined at Spago and enjoyed great service, excellent food unpretentious Italian fare – not classic Italian cuisine or pretending to be.
Hustle bustle, clang bang, excitable conversations to be overheard – honestly if you want a private table at a restaurant where you have absolute anonymity and one on one service then go and pay for it at Mollies or Antoines.
Spago is casual and sophisticated and utterly unpretentious.
And as for the comments about David and Harbans and their businesses – you forget they have been in business in hospitality in Auckland for over twenty years – whilst focussing on their recent losses you may like to remember their contribution to the Auckland hospitality and restaurant scene.
Grow up.

We live close to Spago and I pass by it often so had been interested to give it a go when it first opened. Our first experience in what I believe was their first or second week open was not too bad, the food was pretty slow coming out but the service was good and our waiter dealt well with the delays from the kitchen. The food itself was ok, perhaps not the best Italian I’ve ever had but ok for a change from our usual Asian eats and good enough for us to come back the next week for coffee and dessert which again was just ok.
Interestingly though on a more recent visit we found the problems that we’d assumed would get better once they’d been open longer have actually gotten worse. The food is still really slow but the service has slipped significantly, the original waiters had been efficient and friendly but the staff now are blunt to the point of being rude and I would guess have not previously worked in hospitality. Interesting if these are the owners as other reviews have suggested!
Spago looks the part but is lacking significantly in the core areas of what makes a restaurant good, I think too much attention was put on the design and not on anything else. I will be keeping away and from what I’ve seen I don’t think I’m alone in that thought.

Ate at Spago on Friday night. They get the 2 stars for one friendly server and a pretty good pizza. Apart from that… where do I start.
We decided to take a table outside as it was loud in the restaurant. Not sure what was going on but after about 40mins our pizza finally arrived (would have been nice to be informed about the wait). I like cracked pepper on my pizza, and as we hadn’t been offered any and there was no waiters around to ask, I thought I’d go get a grinder from the counter where they were all lined up.
Well… as I turned to walk back to my table I was stunned to hear “EXCUSE ME!! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, COMING IN TO MY RESTAURANT AND STEALING MY PEPPER GRINDER!!!!” as she wrenched it back off me. I just said to her “I’m actually just eating a pizza at your restaurant”. This mixup was bad enough, but she made no attempt at an apology after she had just belittled me in front of the whole restaurant. She ignored me for the rest of the evening, even making my girlfriend wait at the counter for someone else to come over, while she stood there folding napkins. I have a strong suspicion that this woman was the owner.
An apology did come right at the end from our waiter who was really sincere and I think he was embarrassed at the situation.
PS. some poor woman got a wine glass smashed on her head in the same night.

Jillie in response to your message above, I didn’t realise that having years of experience in the hospitality industry gave you the right to tear strips off your customers. I guess I should get over myself.

A fairly new italian style restaurant in an area which seems to be the new eating ‘zone’!. I had tried the deli/cafe next door and really enjoyed it so decided to give Spago a shot.
My partner and I enjoyed some lovely fresh salads, and beautifully cooked al dente pasta. Our waiter was friendly and attentive and we will definately return to try some of the other great sounding dishes.

Recently i visited Spago, only to be dissapointed. The food here is mediocre and pricy for what it is. I for one would rather head to the abundance of Japanese sushi places up the road for a better deal. The furniture at Spago suits the setting, giving the venue its “look”, although it isnt very Italian. We noticed immediately that the staff all do not know what they were doing or seemed unexperienced. Initially we waited 10 minutes for some coffees(which came out cold), and another 20 minutes before someone came to take our order, by that time we just decided to leave. We came back another day, as we we’re keen on trying the pasta. The second time we visited, service was even worse. Random shouting and complaining among staff and management made it impossible for me or my wife to enjoy a conversation. The clatter of equipment as a woman shouted at staff sent a shiver down my spine as she approached us to ask if we were ok. Her body language and tone immediateley suggested to me she is not used to hospitality, or rather good hospitality. The lady that served us was a very unpleasant woman and talking to her really put me off completely. I replied “Yes we are just about to leave..” I used to visit their venue Opium frequently for their excellent drinks and good service, but now that it is closed I am glad to say i will never visit another venue of that group ever again.

We used to always pass Spago on the way to work and from. So, one day my partner and I decided to check out the menu. We were greeted by the friendly waiters and also the owner.

My partner being Italian, always have high expectation when it comes to Italian food. We had the tomato, basil, and parmesan bruschetta to share. It was brilliant, really tasted the freshness.

For Mains, we had the Pollo (chicken,mash and artichoke) and the Beef Fillet and asparagus. The Beef was cooked perfectly and I loved how the chicken was seasoned just right.

All the while, the waiters were making sure that we were looked after.

For Dessert we had the Tiramisu and the Chocolate Fondant – had to have the great coffee too, had the cappucino and also the espresso. – Never leave this place without having dessert. It’s a MUST!

This has become one of our favourite local restaurants, and have been there frequently due to the great service and great food.

Can’t wait till they have their full liquor licence as at the moment it’s BYO licence only.

Cheers Spago!

SPAGO. Now there’s a great name for an Italian-ish restaurant because (reviewers like to play this game, drop in their knowledge of foreign languages, even though they just got the translation off Babel Fish) “spago” is the word for cord, rope, shoelace, string, twine. Add the ending for little and you get “little cord, rope, shoelace”. Spaghetti.
It’s such a great name for a mainly pizza and pasta restaurant that Wolfgang Puck, the Austrian celebrity chef and restaurateur formerly known as Wolfgang Johannes Topfschnig, used it for his 2-Michelin Star restaurant in Beverly Hills, flagship of a chain in Chicago, Las Vegas, Maui and Palo Alto. Where he serves California cuisine. To eat his Italian cuisine, you have to go to Postrio (San Francisco, Vegas) or Trattoria del Lupo (Vegas).
I’m guessing that the first, rather than the second, paragraph is why David and Harbans Williams have chosen Spago as the name of their new place in Downtown Auckland. Right at the far end of Britomart, the country’s largest heritage building revival, though some of the buildings have considerably less character than others around town. Well, almost at the far end: Spago segues into the General Store, a deli that the Williams’ are in the process of opening. “In the process” because, after a week or three, the shelves are by no means full.
Auckland readers may be surprised to learn that the Williams are opening a new restaurant, or a deli, or both, because the “hospitality heavyweight” and his wife / business partner put five of their companies into liquidation around Christmas, citing debts of more than $2.7 million.
Since the 80s they have opened a number of high-profile restaurants including Opium, an Asian tapas bar in Aotea Square; Pontoon Bar and Restaurant in Westhaven and Scoozi in Herne Bay, which are now operating under new companies connected to them.
Glorious Food, their catering company, and the top of the pyramid, The Relish Group, are also in liquidation. The Williams’ also run the Sugar and Spice Cafe in the Auckland Domain, though the city council took legal action last year over an unpaid debt relating to Pinot, a council-owned function and wedding venue in Orakei.
I’d noticed Spago, and then set about unravelling the back-story above, because it’s on my walk to work, and if there’s one thing that can be guaranteed to rouse me from my early-morning reverie, it’s the sight and smell of a new eatery. It’s also just about bang-smack halfway from our place to the city, which made it the perfect place to stop for a bite on our way to a concert last week (The Handsome Family, if you must know. Gothic folk. If your idea of a good night out is listening to an Abe Lincoln lookalike and a Gypsy fiddler’s runaway wife singing about farmers falling down bottomless holes and 1930s inventors’ phobias about pigeons, check them out).
From the footpath, and even more from inside the door, there’s much to like about Spago. The big, high, open room, with floor-to-ceiling windows to ogle passers-by. Or be ogled by. Fresh, spare décor, off-white walls and brown-leather banquettes. Well-spaced tables. Large, too: in fact they set a twosome quite some distance apart. Best to dispense with discreet conversation and go for the hand-waving, louder chatter. It’s somehow more Italian, si?
Even the waiter comes from the Med, but several hundred kilometres inside France: Toulouse, and not even I am game to try to work a pun about “spaghetti western” from that. He delivered bad news – the licence hadn’t come through, which anyone who’s visited a just-opened restaurant in Auckland will know is an all-too frequent state of affairs. We (read “I”) would have to walk across the road to a bottle shop if we wanted wine. We did. I left immediately, and returned to not find Jude, because the hosts had introduced themselves and were showing off their new premises.
By now we are 675 words into this and you will be expecting some description, some commentary, a few more well-chosen lines about the food. Spago’s tagline is “fresh Italian”, which means entrees of those now-familiar bruschetti and antipasti (otherwheres known as tapas or mezze or little plates) followed by a tight mains list (fish, chicken, beef fillet), some well-known pastas, risottos and pizzas, and five predictable desserts. Oh, come on, bet you can name them.
Entrees run out in the $16 range and mains toddle from the kitchen in the early to mid-twenties, which is not bad for this part of Auckland, if you can find a menu that features something other than tapas (Agents & Merchants next door), toasties and high tea (Smith, around the corner) or bar food (Northern Steamship or Brew on Quay, across the square).
Our entrees – artichoke, beetroot and eggplant salad; calmari, decently using the tastier tentacles rather than the often-rubbery body – were a fair start.
Mains – ricotta and spinach ravioli for Jude, pappardelle with cubes of pork belly, a spicy sausage and tomato sauce for me – were … well, there is already one restaurant in Auckland which has a very good reputation for its pasta menu, and that is Delicious (though its reputation sometimes overshadows its performance), and Spago wasn’t.
These days, all of us have seen enough Food TV shows and bought more than enough River Café cookbooks to boil up jolly good al dente pasta dishes at home. And when you go out to eat, even if it is a cheapish and cheerful bite on the way to a show, and it feels as if you’ve paid good money for something that you could emulate – or even better – at home, there’s bound to be some disappointment. Nice restaurant, shame about the food.

JUST HAD A GREAT LUNCH AT SPAGO (CUSTOM STREET BRITTOMART END)
This is a new venture by a well known catering couple.
The menu is Italian, we had 2 fish main courses and my schnapper was excellent served with mussels and prawns, and a light very tasty sauce.My wife and I eat out quite a lot and I can say without reservation that the food at Spago,s is superb, and the prices very reasonable.
At the moment they are waiting for a license so it is BYO only