The Herald together with Restaurant Hub present the Canvas edition of our first ever restaurant awards.
How do I love thee? Let me count the calories.
Hungry Aucklanders are spoiled for choice. There are around 6500 hospitality businesses in this city. That's a lot of pork belly (and even more salted caramel).
When Restaurant Hub asked Herald reviewers to name the creme de la creme of our 2017 eating year, I had to think hard.
Last year, I ate from more than 300 plates, platters, bowls, boards and flaming frying pans. Where would I recommend you take your date, your mother-in-law or your cousin who is visiting from Melbourne?
A famous chef once told me toast would be the best meal you'd ever had, if you had eaten it with the right people. Food is subjective and moderated by circumstance. Food is personal. In my opinion, the best restaurateurs and chefs take what they do very personally indeed.
In Canvas, we visit 50 restaurants annually (as anonymously as we can) and feature a mix of new openings and old favourites. In 2017, our top picks were:
The cactus guac that came with a deep-fried avocado leaf. Photo / Getty Images
The temperature is heading for 28 degrees as I type. Now would be a good time to go to Inti and bathe in an icy slurry of cucumber and lemon verbena with sweet pineapple and creamy cream cheese — easily the best dessert I ate last year. Chef Javier Carmona had me at "cactus guacamole with an avocado leaf", but it's not just his ingredients that are interesting. Hand-beaten metal platters, earthenware jugs and the Incan wall art by Flox set the tone. The menu is South and Central American (pre and post-Conquistador) and you won't find anything like this anywhere else in New Zealand because the food, and the place, are the sum of Carmona's heritage — and his life so far.
It's a little restaurant that's a little hard to find, but persevere, because the service is impeccable, the fit-out oozes style and the food is insanely good. Cook your own meat Korean charcoal barbecue-style, but save room for chef Min Baek's "military stew". The former Uni-Ko food truck owner has taken an historical one-pot wonder and elevated it to a thing of fine-dining beauty.
The shiitake and tofu gyoza, and the signature butterfly cocktail. Photo / Getty Images
Sometimes you want to go somewhere bright and breezy, with enough space between the tables to hear yourself think and speak, to order food that is clean and pretty and won't scare the horses but will impress your guests. For me, that place is Beast & Butterflies, the new hotel restaurant that seriously raises the hotel restaurant bar.
The king prawn salad at Ostro. Photo / Getty Images
Josh Emmett's harbour-view restaurant turned 5 last year with a bit of a fanfare about a new menu, etc, but what I mostly think about Ostro is that it is a solidly classy joint, where the waitpeople know their stuff and the kitchen is consistently great and quite often stupendous — smoked kahawai omelette, I'm looking at you.
Organic chicken served at Augustus Bistro. Photo / Nick Reed
SPQR's sister? Or an elegant older cousin? Augustus Bistro is just as cheek-to-jowl and overheard-in-Ponsonby, but the courtyard is so pretty and the chicken is so sublime. You're on firm oysters and champagne territory, but the bistro classics are all present and accounted for and you don't have to share a plate — unless you want to.
