El Matador
El Matador
When Dining Out Became an Occasion in Auckland
Words: Brent Kennedy
Photography: Auckland Libraries Collection
Long before Auckland became a city of casual dining and shared plates, there was El Matador. Perched on Symonds Street Uptown, from the late 1950s through the 1970s, the restaurant occupies a fond place in the city’s collective memory—a time when dining out was rare, glamorous, and memorably theatrical.
El Matador was one of only a handful of fully licensed restaurants in central Auckland during the 1960s, and that alone made it special. To step inside was to enter a more sophisticated world. Guests climbed a staircase into softly lit dining rooms, greeted by uniformed waitstaff and the hum of conversation that signalled an evening out was underway. This was not somewhere you wandered into on impulse; you dressed up, booked ahead, and treated the night as an event.
The menu reflected mid‑century New Zealand aspirations toward European dining. Steaks, schnitzels, seafood and the much‑remembered crayfish mornay sat alongside classics like “chicken in a basket,” a dish recalled by many as their first ever restaurant meal. Wine choices—Chianti, Blue Nun, Montana Pearl—were part of the ritual, as exotic then as the idea of eating out itself. It was a busy establishment, averaging 3600 meals a month.
El Matador drew couples on dates, families celebrating milestones, nurses from the hospital pooling pay packets, and young Aucklanders tasting independence for the first time. It became woven into personal histories: engagements, birthdays, first paydays, first tastes of restaurant life. Done up in red-and-black décor with dim lighting, it featured live music every night. Beyond the food and service, the opportunity to “Dine and Dance” was an attraction.
It was owned by the very charming Ladislav (Lada) Ourednik. He was of Czechoslovakian descent, escaping the territory by hanging onto the undercarriage of a train to join the French Foreign Legion. Luckily for the New Zealand hospitality industry, Lada immigrated here and eventually owned seven restaurants in the city off the success of El Matador.
By the late 1970s, changing liquor laws and a rapidly expanding dining scene made places like El Matador less unique, and it eventually closed its doors. El Matador is part of hospitality industry folklore, remembered fondly as a place identified with a formative era—when Auckland was learning how to dine out and doing so with unmistakable style.
El Matador was situated on Symonds Street, diagonally across the road from the Edinburgh Castle pub.
