Jesse Mulligan Auckland Restaurant Review: Boda At Movenpick Hotel Serves Korean Fare With Altitude

Is there anything better than a well-made bibimbap? This one – featuring smoky eggplant and a silky 60-degree egg – was a standout dish at this surprisingly located hotel restaurant.

In order to be taken seriously in its own right, the main job of a hotel restaurant is, ironically, to not feel like a hotel restaurant. This is easier said than done but I think it comes down to achieving a healthy selection of the following:

My favourite is QT’s Esther, which ticks all of these boxes (although I have on occasion threatened that last one by showing up), but at Boda we’re more like zero for four. So the key questions becomes: is this a good hotel restaurant as far as hotel restaurants go?

I think the answer is yes. If I was staying at Hotel Movenpick and was too tired or scared to wander Queen St, I would be blimmin’ stoked to travel by elevator to the 13th floor and find a nice restaurant with pleasant staff and 360-degree views of the city I wasn’t keen to experience first hand. In fact I think even an Aucklander would be impressed by this view: on one side our beautiful harbour and the glittering lights of the North Shore, on the other side a high-rise cityscape that TV shows like Suits have made to feel glamorous.

And, sure, once you walk out of the lift, you have to walk past the dozens of plastic emergency tables and chairs they keep on site for spillovers, but by the time you’re in a window seat perusing a menu of Korean-inspired delights, it’s hard to feel unhappy. Plus, it’s such an oddball crowd that the people-watching is fantastic. We saw a table of four Gen Zs order cocktails and almost every food item on the menu; what could the occasion possibly have been that the venue of choice was “top floor of the Movenpick”? While we’re asking questions, why did an ice cream company even get into hotels? I’m not sure I’d go to a hotel named after Duck Island (although they should seriously consider a reality dating show).

Given Auckland’s burgeoning K-population you might wonder why someone wouldn’t just go to an actual Korean restaurant if that was what they were in the mood for but they can be a bit intimidating. Unlike Japanese, not many of the dish names have made it into everyday English, and often there are protocols that the staff assume you will know about (I once waited 20 minutes for a waitress before realising I had to call her with a button). For me, this is part of the fun of trying somewhere new but I think there’s room for something in the middle and Boda is definitely that: a safe environment, helpful staff and mostly delicious food.

The Korean Fried chicken is a crowd pleaser, with a good crunchy batter and a squirt of sweet chilli and mayo. The octopus toastie was an interesting idea but I think you need something flat and uniform to make a dish like this work. An octopus, even chopped up, is one of the hardest proteins to put a lid on and the kitchen gives up on this problem, leaving the top piece of bread sort of leaning sadly against the rest of the sandwich. The beef tataki tasted pretty good but it’s served in a cos lettuce cup, which is too big for the job, and the liquid from the meat marinade sort of leaks into the spare space.

But is there anything better than a good bibimbap? This one’s made with smoky eggplant and a sixty degree egg on wild Korean rice, but of course you’re meant to stir it up all together with gochujang sauces together so the individual components are forgotten. It was great for dinner and would be perfect for breakfast.

Kimchi is sprinkled liberally throughout the menu and I did like the chef’s specialty – a KC mac and cheese which we ordered without bacon and was delish (the restaurant is pretty good for vegetarians, which is a nice bonus). The prawn dish was a bit of a dud – served in its shell, the meat was just not worth the effort and though the idea of halved grapes on a crustacean may be groundbreaking, some ground should remain unbroken.

We finished with a solid tropical sundae made with, you guessed it, Movenpick ice cream. On the way out I visited the bathrooms which were piled high with used hand towels – a disappointing and, you would think, easily fixable oversight in an otherwise fairly luxurious experience.

BODA

Cuisine: Korean

Address: Top floor of the Movenpick Hotel Auckland. 8 Customs St East, Auckland CBD

Drinks: Fully licensed

Reservations: Accepted

From the menu: BBQ prawn $10, octopus toastie $11, Korean fried chicken $25, “Yuk Hwe” beef tataki $21, eggplant bibimbap $33, Kim Chi mac and cheese $14

Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Outstanding, don’t delay.

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