I wasn’t sure about this pub as a restaurant, but finally tried it out last weekend for a casual Sunday meal and had a great experience! The restaurant is off the main bar but still not very noisy, and has comfy seats and a relaxed vibe, while still stylish so you don’t feel like you are stuck at a sticky pub table, or in a congested plastic-table family restaurant. Bank seats are great. The clientele were a mixture of couples, 20 somethings & young families. The staff were really attentive and friendly, and the food was tasty. I had a grilled salmon on chickpea salad and my friend had a beautiful Angus steak with a delicious mushroom gravy. We got mash on the side which was also yum. We wanted a small desert so requested the flourless chocolate Brownie. On being told that was off the kids’ menu (oops), we expected the usual “No, you can’t order off the Kids Menu” reply, but they were happy to let us have it – and share it! Then they had to go get milk for our coffees, so gave us those for free! It didn’t even take that long. All up a really great pub meal & experience, for both couples and families. (They have high chairs available). I’d highly recommend!

I took my Mum for dinner last night and having read other reviews was expecting good things. I was disappointed.
The Villager depite being a fairly relaxed and friendly pub seemed to fancy itself a bit fine dining in terms of it’s food portion size and presentation, unfortunately the food was lacking the fine aspect.

I had duck confit and the duck was really dry and pretty small if you didn’t include the huge flap of fat still attached to it. It’s size was out of proportion with the mashed potato portion I received.

The duo of lamb consisted of two very thin cutlets and 3 tiny short ribs which is perfect if you were aiming to eat less than the recommended palm size amount of meat but for the average guy not nearly enough and for $32 a stingy rather than perfectly proportioned fine dining portion.

The pork belly was nice and the kumara underneath it delicious but the sauce was over reduced and overpowering.

The best thing about the meal was the service – the guy who looked after us was great. Sadly the girl who we tried to pay our bill with, had huge difficulty calculating a relatively simple discount and needed two other people to help her. In the end they gave up and just took an amount off the price!

Not exactly what I was hoping for as the menu read delicously. I probably won’t race back as while we were pondering whether dessert could raise the meal from the doldrums the smell of burnt steak was wafting from the kitchen. We skipped dessert and I’ll probably skip The Villager in future as I expect a little more from meals in the $30 price range – I left feeling like I had wasted $100.

We had a fantastic meal at The Villager back in July. My steak was ‘to die for’ – cooked perfectly and with a very tasty jus. A great local for that after work drink or meal.

We are rugby-league fans and we decided we would like to go out and share a few beers while watching the Anzac test on Friday night, 7 May. We rang our local pub the Villager, which we frequent quite often on a Sunday afternoon to watch the Warriors matches. We were assured they would have the Kiwis/Kangaroos match on at 9:30pm, with kick-off at 10pm. So, we arrived at the pub around 9:45pm, got a few beers at the bar and had a seat.

At this point, all the screens in the pub were tuned in to the test, but the sound system was blaring music. We did not find this strange, as on Sundays music is usually played until kick-off at which point a staff member either turns on the sound to the game or a patron would go to the bar and ask that it be switch on, without issue. So when the Haka started, and then kick-off with music still blaring, my husband went to the bar to ask the commentary be turned on.

About 5 minutes later, a young woman came over to see us (I assumed she was the manager) and informed us that the sound for the game would not be turned on as it would have to be turned up too loud and their licensing did not allow this. At this point, the music was still uncomfortably loud and could easily be heard outside the pub, as we did when we walked down the street on our arrival.

I informed the staff member that I could understand this, but that we had made a point to call the pub in advance to make sure the game would be played. She apologized many times, but made no effort to rectify the situation. I proceeded by asking her if she could refund our beers, as if we had known the sound wouldn’t be turned on, we would never have gone to that particular pub in the first place. She flat out said “No” to our request and quickly got up and left. My husband and I decided to leave and catch the game somewhere else, with sound on, leaving our beers barely touched on the table.

So will not be returning to the Villager and will be weary of our choices in the future!

fabulous new menu. The pork belly is the best I’ve had. Best thing is the staff.

Yesterday which was Fathers Day we as a family decided to treat Dad to a lunch out. Dad thought a meal in a pub would be just great. How wrong as it turned out to be a very bad experience. We waited a very long time for our meals and I had chosen a seafood chowder. When it arrived it looked and tasted like a tin of tomatoes with some minced up mussels in it. It had 2 half slices of dry toasted wholemeal bread on the side and not even any butter. The soup tasted so awful I had to send it back. I was offered a coffee on the house which I accepted but even that was not good. My daughter chose a Caesar salad which was cutup lettuce with a blob of anchovies in it which had obviously come out of the tin and were not even separated. She did manage to eat hers as she was so hungry. Dad chose the hamburger which he said wasn’t too bad. We were all just so disappointed as we had intended to have a nice lunch out. Will never visit The Villager in Remuera again.