Off with the tablecloths. Out with the formality. The Spencer on Byron Hotel’s restaurant is undergoing a transformation.

From breakfast to dinner, in the bar and in the restaurant, the emphasis is now on a new style of smart casual dining: high quality, well-priced meals, platters and snacks, and a friendly ambience that is reflected in the welcome you receive from Restaurant Manager Yelena Zhukovskaya and her front of house team. To go with the change of style is a change of name: SmokePit & Buoy. Contemporary, casual and cleverly suggesting the emphasis of the new menu, which focuses on high quality meat cuts and seafood.

Chef and Kitchen Manager Greg Nees has developed the new menu over the last few months. “The beef is all wagyu beef from First Light Foods in Hawkes Bay,” he says. “It’s the only grass-fed, gm-free wagyu in the world. We get our meat direct, and meticulously age it in our fridges here for around 60 days.” If you know about the wagyu marble grading system, you’ll know that the 7-9 mbs grade of the signature dry-aged rump cap (a cut widely used in South America) puts it at the very top end of quality.

“We specialise in low and slow cookery, using an American-style offset smoker and the latest in convection ovens to produce a refined style of pit cookery,” Greg says, identifying a couple of the slow-cooked menu items as must-try options. After 48 hours cooking, the brisket is melt-in-the-mouth tender, and the smoked lamb shoulder on the bone, for two people, begs you to bring along a fellow lamb-lover.

The seafood is equally high quality, ordered each evening and delivered daily from Lee Fisheries. Greg recommends trying the bouillabaisse, or the market fish. What you get, of course, depends on what’s been caught the day before. “We get access to premium export graded fish, caught on long-lines.” He orders whole fish, and his kitchen team break them down. “That’s not done often any more,” he notes, but it suits his commitment to freshness.

In addition to the changes to the dinner menu, there’s now a kids’ menu, available all day, with enough variety to suit even the pickiest eater, and a new lunch menu. “Our [lunchtime] specialty is New York-style deli rolls,” says Yelena, with the Ruben (thickly sliced house-made wagyu beef pastrami, with pickles, cheddar and thousand island sauce) taking pride of place. But at no more than $15 for any of the sandwiches, you might find it hard to resist the pork belly, the smiked salmon or even the Wagyu Beast, with 200g of wagyu beef brisket.

Both lunch and dinner menus feature Light Eats(entrées) and Substantial Eats (mains), Why Nots (sides) and desserts. With prices reduced across the whole menu, whatever you choose is well-priced, making SmokePit & Buoy not just a special but also an affordable dining experience.

Alongside Greg’s menu, Yelena has introduced some weekly specials: at the bar you can get the Thursday night cocktail of the week for just $5 with complimentary canapes, and $5 tap beers on Friday and Saturday nights. In the restaurant, Sunday is roast dinner day, with an early start time of 5.30pm. This $22.50 feast includes bread rolls with soup of the day, salad, and roast of the day with roasted root vegetables and sautéed greens – all changed out seasonally, of course.

While changes abound, Greg and Yelena are maintaining the restaurant’s enormously popular events programme, with wine-matching from one of SmokePit & Buoy’s selected wine suppliers. The most recent featured a sold-out venison night. Next up, in October, is likely to be a seafood night, with diners watching the breaking down of a particular fish (last year a broadbill, perhaps a moon fish this year) and insights into the intricacies of the cutting and cooking of each element of the fish.

Whichever way you look at it, SmokePit & Buoy is a far cry from its more formal incarnation, and its new menu and smart-casual approach seems destined to increase its appeal to locals and tourists alike.

SmokePit & Buoy, The Spencer on Byron Hotel, Byron Avenue, Takapuna Ph 09 9164982

Open for a la carte breakfast from 6.30-10am, lunch 12-2pm, dinner 6-10pm (except Sundays, 5.30-10pm).