Gusto

Great location for afterwork drink, and pre-​drink! After few drinks, you can easily move to restaurant for tasty, delicious italian cuisine for dinner. Complimentary canapes/​finger food at the bar area, so you can enjoy few glasses of wine and have some substantial nibbly. Great idea having canapes/​finger food available! Excellent service, great choices for drinks!

Delicious food, great friendly service for a Sunday lunch. Couldn’t fault it really, we dined for the fixed lunch which included an antipasti buffet, shared pasta main and a desert plus coffees. Paid for 2 adults and kids dine free. Home now to rest the food baby.

We had a good lunch with decent Italian dishes and some interesting NZ wine. During our brief stay in Auckland, drinking local wine has been important to me. The food ranged from good to great. Radishes in aioli was less than I hoped though I thought aioli good. Wife’s salad had a very good dressing: best she has had she claimed. Ragu with boar pretty good. My vegetarian pasta with pumpkin and pistachios ok though my wife thought more of it than I did. Asparagus was what should be expected. No dessert. Wine list was interesting: lots of interesting Italian red but we came to drink NZ wine and there was adequate to choose from, some quite nice, though we restricted to wines by the glass. Our waitress was nice and helpful and gave good advice on wine. This is also the lobby bar but does not seem to distinguish itself. In fairness, we were not in the lobby during prime drinking hours.

Federal Street is famous with the line-​up of award-​winning eateries, especially after Masu swept up the coveted Restaurant of the Year after Depot Eatery in 2012. Gusto at the Grand takes over the atmosphere from former Dine by Peter Gordon, with sweeping chandeliers and grand paintings. Though there’s something ironic with the rustic Italian ambiance that Gusto is trying to achieve by donning their waiters in overalls whilst being surrounded by marbled walls.
With the menu designed by Sean Connolly, famous for his television series and The Grill next door, Connolly’s philosophy continues with his quest for simple food and letting fresh ingredients do the talking. I love the idea of sharing plates at Gusto, it’s the perfect excuse to nab at your partner’s food without seeming overly greedy.
Antipasto, which literally means «before the meal» is meant to stimulate your appetite before the main meal. With your expected salami, prosciutto and olives, one addition is the freshly shaved lardo. I wasn’t too excited about eating «lard» per say but it’s an acquired taste as you let the thin slices slowly dissolve in your mouth.
The calamari and prawns were lightly seasoned without the weight of oily batter which makes it perfect to nibble at between mouthfuls of pasta or heavy meat. Apart from that, it was hardly memorable as the aioli was a bit bland and I found myself squeezing more lemon than necessary to jazz up the taste.
The baby chicken was one of the more memorable dishes — beautiful and tender. It was seasoned simply with lemon and garlic, and the freshness and honesty was comforting. Arguably, I should have expected more excitement at a prestige Skycity restaurant, but it was a good change from trying to figure out the myriad of ingredients and foams on fine-​dining plates.
Gusto makes their pastas in-​house and being an Italian restaurant, I couldn’t leave without trying at least one of their pastas. Personally this was the highlight of the meal with the ravioli being beautiful chewy and infused with flavour. Even with it filled with potato, it didn’t feel heavy or uncomfortable and I found myself easily reaching for seconds.
I’m a huge fan of Lewis Road butter and milk so this pannacotta was a must-​have when I first saw it on the menu. When it came in a pool of dessert soup, I was a bit alarmed. The idea of a beautifully creamily formed pannacotta was knocked straight out of my head. In the midst of the creamy liquidness, I settled in to spoon up the pinenuts and passionfruit — which wasn’t all that bad, but I would have preferred my pannacotta pudding.
As with every Skycity restaurant, there are many expectations to be met. Gusto was highly raved about and there have been mixed reviews from diners. We did enjoy great service from the staff who were genuinely caring but professional. I felt the food bore a high price tag from what was offered, but if you are after simple and honest food with fresh ingredients and want a break from the white table cloth scene — give Gusto a go!

After finishing a night out we ordered a couple of cocktails before heading up to retire. I don’t know of it was the wrong place, time or bartender but the cocktails were barely drinkable. I tried to drink it a fee times with determination… But… No. And I know my cocktails. No lie, but my tongue was still a bit burnt from all the ginger root (or whatever it was) that was in my drink. The other was a lemon /​lime concoction not much better. Unfortunate really, being a top hotel in Auckland. Aaaaanyway complained nicely & got 2 more drinks in return for free. Had breakfast there which was AMAZING so despite the previous nights situation the brekky kind of made up for that. Would not go there for cocktails again though. Sorry!

Great Vibe both the lobby bar and Gusto. Open morning, noon and night newly opened Gusto has added another layer of interest and good eats to the Sky City complex.

Stayed at the hotel on a recent business trip and we needed a QUICK lunch before heading to a conference. We told the waitress we needed to be in and out in 30 minutes and she said no problem. She recommended we order from some of the share plate/​entrée options and there were so many that looked good that we ended up ordering about six to share between four of us. While I didn’t eat the beef/​seafood options, the vegetarian options were delightful. The pea bruschetta, the ricotta and honey, the tomato salad… even just the bread with olive oil was delicious. We were bummed we had to scarf it down so quickly and couldn’t sit peacefully and enjoy every bite.
Since it was so good (and since it was raining and we couldn’t be bothered walking somewhere) my colleague and I decided to head back for dinner. This time we both ordered a pasta and some wine and took our sweet ass time.
I don’t love the ambiance in the main dining room as it does really feel like you’re in a hotel lobby (which it shouldn’t because the food is too good for that) but the hidden little back room was private, intimate and had the fine dining feel.
While I’m sure there are hundreds of restaurants in Auckland I should have tried before I went back to the same place twice — it was good and I just couldn’t help myself.

I currently have a little bit of an obsession with wild boar ragu, so I was THRILLED to see this on the menu at Gusto. As soon as my life calms down a bit, hopefully around Easter, I will get my slow cooker and my pasta maker out to recreate the beautiful wild boar ragu with pappardelle pasta.
Other than that, I thought the place was pretty average. Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, the food was perfectly adequate (the veal was superb), but there was this weird SkyCity vibe thing going on that I’m just not a fan of. It was so sterile, so boring… I mean, we all know Gina’s is terribly overpriced with fairly terrible food, but at least they have atmosphere in spades. Compare Gusto to something right next door like Depot or Federal Deli, and I know exactly where I would prefer to be.
Put it this way, I was so bored by the whole occasion that I don’t think I can even go into detail. I’ll try a quick summary instead:
The rosemary and garlic pizza bread comes in this weird takeaway pizza box which I thought was too quirky for a place that has no quirks anywhere else;
The staff are pretty smav, drinks took forever and they don’t seem to be that educated on the food. They did, however, make efforts to accommodate my dining companion who is allergic to garlic (what a horrible allergy — my theory is always chuck more garlic in), and they mean well;
The cheese and olives dish is lovely, you should order that if you like big hunks of cheese and olives with oil. I do, so that pleased me immensely;
The share plates with pasta are a bit weird, and I didn’t really share mine, but it works at Depot so maybe I’m just being a bit snotty?
All in all, it’s worth a visit, especially if you’re going with grandparents who can’t hear well or something because there’s no crazy atmosphere in there. Do order the wild boar if you like that kind of thing, it is beautiful. I probably won’t be back, unless it’s a client lunch or something and someone has a specific hankering. I would suggest going elsewhere, there are much better restaurants in Auckland. Maybe try Baduzzi instead.