Eden Cloak Room

Mt Eden Village is such a weird part of town for me. I drive through it literally everyday and it feels like my local. except I’d only ever been inside two or three of the stores. It’s just somewhere I drive through to get to the city but it’s never a destination. Anyway I’ve driven by Eden Cloak Room a million times and finally had the chance to come here for a friend’s birthday dinner/​drinks.
We ordered a tandoori chicken pizza, a taco, a quesedilla, squid rings and karaage chicken. I get that flimsy pizza bases seem ‘fancier’ and more authentic or some crap but I really prefer when the toppings have a little something to hold onto. the pizza base was so thin that it felt like I was eating the toppings on their own. Plus there were cashews on the pizza and you’ll either be the type of person who likes ‘GoUrMeT’ pizzas with fruit and nuts on them… or not. The taco and quesedilla tasted identical to me (though by this point I had drunk a Rekordelig and a cheeky sav) and the squid rings were pretty good. I feel like a lot of establishments are naming their fried chicken ‘karaage’ to make it sound like some thought and creativity went into the dish when actual karaage tastes pretty different to regular fried chicken. And fried chicken does not automatically become karaage if you add mayonnaise on the side.
So while the food wasn’t terrible I see the menu more of as snacks to accompany your alcoholic beverage rather than a stand-​alone selection of food.
In general the atmosphere was pretty nice. it’s dark enough inside to seem appropriately night-​timey without feeling like you have to blindly feel your way around the room. Which is nice.

This place is ALWAYS buzzing no matter what day of the week. It has a great atmosphere here, I seem to find that I go for one drink and end up staying for ages because I always have a great time. They have an excellent wine list, and their house wine is nice, not a cheap and nasty one. They have great outdoor seating but this is almost always taken, like seriously all hours of the day, everyday! It’s a great place to meet friends, you can get quite a big group around one of their large tables. The service here is great, all really friendly people that help make a night at Eden Cloakroom even better! I just don’t come here that often because it is always so so busy, which is a shame… they should expand!

Eden Cloak Room is your local Ponsonby bar in Mt Eden. Along with the trendy cafés, this bar tries, and succeeds, to disassociate the suburb from its poorer looking cousin, Dominion Rd. Of course, the area has adopted the name «Mt Eden Village», so you can hazard a guess as what to expect.
The bar itself is clean and good looking, albeit a little small, with a great wine list to offer. Service is slightly aloof and reviews of the venue should include words like «aloof» and «albeit» or words of a similar caliber. Very busy and very loud on a Friday night.
Try and get a seat during the times people aren’t pressed against the fence like an egg slicer. With better service it could easily be a ⁴⁄₅.

Awful. It looked pleasant enough from the outside, in fact the inside looked pleasant enough as well — it’s appearance wasn’t why it was awful. When we walked in, the front of house guy was having a conversation with the barman, I had to interrupt them to get his attention, he sat us down walked away without asking us if we would like anything to drink, and carried on his conversation. He and the barman had both been staring at the girl I was with constantly over the course of our meal, to the point where it was like they had just given up on any normal kind of courtesy. I ordered the lamb burger which looked like it had been thrown together by a baboon, and the patty was raw in the middle. Could not recommended this place with with a loaded revolver to my head.

So the Cloak Room is the It Bar (ooh I just made that term up) of the Mt Eden village. Although sometimes you’ll walk past and just think «really?» I guess it’s a fair reflection of the locals — young hipsters, older hipsters and then, well, sometimes just a lot of old guys. That last demographic is probably my least favourite because sadly they are the worst behaved after a few hours in the sunny courtyard at Eden Cloak Room. Leery, loud and deeply unstylish, they look like they just came off the golf course and hate their wives so much they couldn’t stand to go home. But I digress.
The courtyard IS a good spot for a lazy summer afternoon and inside is nice and cool on a hot day when the outside tables are all taken. It’s smallish so gets busy, but from day one this place knew what it was about and continues to do well-​chosen wines and beers with some tasty food offerings (but really $ 8 for «handcut chips» is just a rip — the knife cut them!).
Another (sort of irrelevant) thing that annoys me about this place is that it’s in the Auckland Entertainment book under the Fine Dining section. Now good on you Eden Cloak Room for achieving this but WTF?! This is primarily a bar that does a better level of pub grub (certainly better than that place a few doors down), but if you want restaurant atmos this is NOT the place.
Anyway, the staff here really know their stuff and make good recommendations for the indecisive and apart from the clientele, it’s a classy place.

The Eden Cloak Room is one of the best places in the suburb to people watch. While it’s not as fun to be on the receiving end of the stares of late twenties and upwards punters as you walk by, it’s definitely a better time while you’re on the bar side of that picket fence. I ordered a Rekorderlig cider, which came in a huge tall glass, and a ‘pint of hand cut chips’. They also came served in a tallish vessel, with some kind of sweet aioli on the side that I didn’t like. The chips were nice enough, but nothing to write home about. My friends shared a pizza, which was proclaimed ‘good’ but with little elaboration (they’re 2 for 1 on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5pm by the way), and the pork belly which was ‘very good’ and was finished first.
Personally, I’d suggest this place if you’re looking for late afternoon drinks and snacks and judging. Make the most of the outdoor seating — take your most critical friends, grab a table and get people watching.
Full disclosure: I went here on a semi-​terrible semi-​date once so my review may be skewed by that experience. I say semi-​date because it’s a long story, and that’s the best explanation I can give in the smallest amount of words possible. I say semi-​terrible because he asked me to make out with him three times despite being told no, and the staff wouldn’t serve me because I was too drunk. Oh well. At least we know the waitresses are responsible.