St Marée is a seafood bistro and coffee bar at 8/33 Hurstmere Road, Takapuna, on Auckland's North Shore. It overlooks Hurstmere Green, with Takapuna Beach a short walk away, and is open Tuesday to Sunday from 7.30am until late. It holds a Google rating of 4.7.
### Name and background
Marée is the French word for tide, which the owner describes as an acknowledgement of the ocean the kitchen sources from. The venue is a reinvention of Catch 21, which occupied the same site. Owner Robin Lee closed for a fortnight, refreshed the dining room to a more open layout and installed an oyster deck and bar area, reopening as St Marée on 16 July 2025. Lee's stated reasoning was that Takapuna had restaurants by the sea but no dedicated seafood restaurant, and that the Catch 21 name left customers unsure whether it was a cafe, a coffee shop or a restaurant.
### Food and drink
The menu is roughly 90 percent seafood, built around local and seasonal catch, with sharing-style plates at accessible prices. The kitchen shucks oysters, clams and paua fresh, and also smokes and dry-ages fish and shellfish in house. The offer runs across the full day:
The venue also runs an Express Lunch at $24.80 per person for two courses, which is a genuinely useful format for a working lunch on a schedule. The strong coffee culture carried over from the previous business.
### Private dining and group bookings
St Marée takes private evening bookings for groups of 30 to 40 people, arranged directly with Robin and the team. The restaurant does not publish formal function packages, floor plans or AV capability on its website, so numbers, exclusivity and menu format need to be confirmed with the venue.
### Suitability for events and group dining
The practical case for St Marée is a North Shore dining option with a clear point of difference. For an incentive group or a client dinner, a seafood-led menu with an oyster deck is an easy sell and gives a sense of place that a generic bistro does not. The 30 to 40 private evening capacity covers most corporate dinners and team functions, and the express lunch suits delegate groups working in or near Takapuna who need to eat quickly and return.
It is a dining venue rather than a meetings venue - there is no published conference or AV capability - so planners should treat it as the meal component of a programme. Takapuna is roughly 15 minutes from the Auckland CBD across the harbour bridge and has its own accommodation, making it viable either as a North Shore base or as a change of scene from city-centre Auckland venues.
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