It’s been just over two months since Anise opened in the space that was Sid at the French Cafe, and the latter reverted to its legacy name The French Cafe and re-opened in the space that was private dining space The French Kitchen…

Anna King Shahab falls in love with a tongue dish at alma and reflects on the evolution of offal in her life.

Thomas Netana Wright is breaking ground as a bean-to-bar chocolate maker and chocolatier marrying French techniques, Maori traditions, and Pacific produce.

Head bartender at Voco Hotel’s Bar Albert Kodchawan ‘Smile’ Sakulwandee brings an impressive pedigree from her home city Bangkok, and a level of attention to her drinks programme that ensures that everyone who takes the elevator to level 38 and heads through the velvet curtains is in for a cocktail experience to savour.

Tacoteca, a taqueria in City Works Depot, was opened by chef Jean Brito, restaurateur Mundo Farrera and their respective partners Hannah Port and Anna Farrera in 2023. When I posted a rave about my first proper visit to sample a good deal of the menu, commentary that followed was generally enthusiastic and positive especially from those who had actually visited themselves, but there were a few voices posturing that the tacos …

Chef Henry Onesomo is about to put Samoa on the culinary landscape in a way never seen before, when Tala, the restaurant he is constructing with wife Debby Onesemo, opens in Parnell on November 2. The restaurant will seat 28 in the space that was formerly Pasture, plus a staggered launch will soon see the doors open at Inu, a bar and more casual dining space the couple are creating in the closed-in balcony space behind the main restaurant…

Plabita Florence’s Forest began as a pop-up, progressed into a petite restaurant on Symonds St, and then after a hiatus, reopened last month in a new, significantly larger site in the Valley Rd shops on Dominion Rd. Over a late-morning coffee, I sat down for a korero with Plabita at one of the restaurant’s handsome and practical cork-topped tables…

At this Restaurant Month event at Homeland on August 17th, chef Peter Gordon will treat guests to a meal that’s uniquely of this place, a true Auckland affair.

Sydney-based Kiwi chef Justin North has cherry picked some classic dishes from his stellar career to cook with top-notch Aotearoa produce alongside one of our top chefs Des Harris and his team at FISH, overlooking the water at Princes Wharf for one night only on August 17th.

Fronds of dried kombu (kelp) decorate a wall in Balmoral’s Udon Works and the same thing lies at the heart of the menu. It’s rausu kombu – kombu from the cold waters off the coast of the city of Rausu on the island of Hokkaido in Japan’s northern reaches, rich in minerals from the Siberian ice flow. Among several species, Rausu is considered the ‘King of kombu’ when it comes to making dashi, the stock flavoured with dried kelp that is the foundation of so many of the dishes on the menu at Udon Works…

Pin Yue Shanghai Restaurant is situated in the space that was formerly home to Peach’s Hot Chicken. As the name indicates, the menu includes many Shanghai mainstays but there are also influences from Sichuan as well as a good helping of Cantonese dishes, as the co-owner of the Panmure branch Lily is from Hong Kong (there are two other branches on Pin Yue in Auckland and the menus vary). In fact, the menu is huge and nobody would struggle to find something to love on it…

The tables at Kalye Manila, which occupies a corner site on Queens Rd, are named for train stations of the Phillipines’ capital city, the walls are plastered with photos of Filipina celebrities including the magnificent batok-tattooed Apo Whang-Od – at 106 years, the oldest person to grace a cover of Vogue earlier this year. From the kitchen, a steady flow of sizzling and steaming dishes emerged, hearty portions to satisfy the cravings of expats and non-Filipinos, big family groups, couples sharing a plate, and the occasional solo diner like me…

Dominion Rd is lucky to have Omni – in a nutshell, it’s one of those un-showy but over-delivering neighbourhood eateries that diners love returning to over and over.

The first chef collab events of Auckland Restaurant Month, Sid Sahrawat with Nelly Robinson cooking at Cassia is set to be cracker – explosive flavour carried by show stopping techniques and presentation. Anna King Shahab had a chat with these two lauded chefs to get a sneak peek of the menu ahead of them getting on the tools for this special occasion on the evenings of August 2 and 3. Yes, that’s next week! If you’re thinking about grabbing a ticket, get cracking!

When it’s Malaysian carrot cake, chai tow kway. A favourite dish from hawker centres and street vendors in Singapore and across Malaysia, you can get your fix in Tāmaki Makaurau at Blossom Court in Panmure. This carrot cake is a savoury stir-fry with the key ingredient being a cake made from savoury white radish (AKA lobak or daikon). There are no orange carrots, and certainly no walnuts, in sight…

When Yuli Roesli emigrated from Indonesia to New Zealand in 1997 she suffered culture shock – Auckland was quiet (and a bit boring), with few fellow Indonesians, and very limited access to her favourite things to eat. Back then, opening an Indonesian restaurant would’ve been a pretty tough call – the cuisine not being well understood at all by the general population here then, and with only a very small community of expats upon whom you could count to give you a go…

Where to find the the best soft pretzels in Auckland is a question that has cropped up frequently in the Lazy Susan community – it seems the Susans have a bit of a penchant for the German twisted bread wearing a deep golden shiny coat, with the just-so chew that greets the teeth upon biting in…

Restaurant-quality food in a cosy pub setting – sounds like a dream scene, but it exists IRL on the corner of Dominion and Valley Roads, in a heritage building no less. The Bridgman’s Sean Lee worked his way through 5-star hotels in his native UK before hopping on a plane and hopping through South East Asia and Australia on his OE, landing in New Zealand in 2007 and here he stayed, working in top establishments around the city…

In the lead up to Ooh-Fa opening in August last year, the excitement was palpable among the many fans of its sister restaurant, Kārangahape Rd’s petite Pici, who were keen to see more of its ilk in a different part of town.  Where Pici nails the tightly focused handmade pasta brief, Ooh-Fa does the very same in perfecting pizza…

Ziggle: a beautiful example of onomatopoeia from the Korean language, and a K-fried chicken and burger joint with a burgeoning number of branches around Tāmaki Makaurau, including on the bustling strip of Queens Road, Panmure. Owner Chris Choi began his fast food business a few years ago, naming it Ziggle after the Korean word used to describe food sizzling – 지글지글 – in Korean it’s pronounced rather like ‘dzigeul’…