One80 Restaurant & Lounge Bar, Wellington

Rating: 2

We ate dinner here in August 2025.

Wedges
Tandoori chicken pizza
Twin burgers for Wellington on a Plate
Macarons

With an entire wall festooned with awards, and staff eagerly talking about how they are going for another Wellington on a Plate win (have you heard that they won last year and the year before?), One80 sets expectations high from the get go. We recently enjoyed a really fun eight course degustation that they put on as a special event in this very restaurant. But tonight they have not brought their A-game. We were informed that they had split half their staff off to attend Beervana, a beer-based food event that’s more about drinking lots of beers and having a spew than it is about the appreciation of subtle flavours and food pairings. Because of this they had eliminated their usual menu and subbed in their bar snacks menu, of which a good wodge was unavailable. Plus they were offering their WOAP burger.

Not to be deterred, we forged ahead with the much-hyped WOAP burger, two bar snacks and a dessert. The burger, which was actually a pair of sliders, came with a detailed description of the meal’s concept and all ingredients, except for one radically superfluous lemon slice which showed up on the side. Given the level of instruction, both written and oral (we were twice told which order to eat the burgers in, fish first them beef), we were perplexed by what role the lemon was meant to play. To be safe, we just left it on the plate. After all, who has heard of squeezing lemon onto a burger? The chips, a poppadom spiced french fry with pickle aioli, were bloody good, but the fish burger was a let down. It pissed watery sauce all over your hand when you ate, to the point that on the bus home we both noticed that our hands still smelled like fish. Also Business Andy had some chewy grey fish in his half of the burger, when you’re charging $37 and hoping to go for the threepeat this is a serious problem. The beef burger was better, it was hearty with warm Indian flavours and fun crunchy bits of puffed rice on top.

There’s only so much that can be done with a plate of wedges. We aren’t expecting the earth. But we also weren’t expecting to pay $15 for wedges then for them to come with a little airplane-dining-style single serve tub of sweet chilli sauce. We ain’t at Dominos, put the sauce in a frickin bowl. It just didn’t fit with the ooh-la-la-cloth-napkins-view-of-the-harbour-look-at-our-awards dining style. Furthermore some of the wedges were underdone.

The pizza was another letdown. This restaurant specialises in Indian flavours so you might think that their Tandoori chicken pizza would be an event. Perhaps if that event is an 8th birthday party this pizza would fit right in. The flavours were lacklustre and the base was too bready to be made in house. Talk about a wide and firm crust too. Luckily we had some delicious leftover pickle aioli to dip our crusts in, otherwise it would have been a real trudge. And not to harp on about the price, but it was $26.

To top it off we decided to treat ourselves to a pair of macarons. At $4 a pop we were expecting quality. The macarons themselves weren’t bad, perhaps a little dense. But they were let down by 1) being served fridge-cold, 2) being miniature in size, and 3) the wait staff not letting us know what flavour they were meant to be. One was clearly lemon, but the other was a source of debate. Cookies & cream? Hazelnut?

Perhaps this isn’t reflective of One80’s normal dining experience. We suspect that will be their excuse when they read this review. But the fact remains that we showed up on a random night and we got what we got. It’s not our job to accommodate your poor decisions, we can only judge what is on offer. So if you’re going to charge like a wounded bull, at least don’t cook like one too.