There are great restaurants everywhere these days — in basements, alleyways, malls, hotel lobbies, laneways, and even in menswear stores. That last is where you’ll find The Lodge Bar, in a room off to the side of Rodd & Gunn. It’s certainly the best clothing-store restaurant we’ve ever been to, and one of the best restaurants in Auckland full stop. 

The restaurant’s success is primarily the work of executive chef Matt Lambert, who made his name in then Michelin-starred New York restaurant The Musket Room and who also has one of the best food-related Instagram accounts in the country (just as likely to spam you with inane memes as it is to provide you with helpful cooking advice). Lambert’s cooking is skilled and inventive, but tends towards the bright and the bold over the delicate. A lot of steak, lamb and various delicious forms of potato. Oh, and it makes a lot of use of the restaurant’s Josper charcoal grill (claimed to be the hottest indoor grill on the market). 

The Lodge is a modern yet traditional restaurant. The interiors are clean and comfortable, the service friendly but never casual. If you hate people asking if you’d like to know how the menu works, as if you’ve never had shared plates before, this isn’t that kind of restaurant. It’s a contemporary bistro, with food cooked with the skill and attention to detail of the finest of fine-dining restaurants. We recommend being hungry when you walk through the door.