Jesse Mulligan: Why I love Auckland

Auckland is one of the world's top 10 cities, according to Lonely Planet. We've been asking prominent residents what they think about the city.

I love Auckland for the food.

Twenty great restaurants have opened in the past 12 months, and each of them is different from the others.

Dumplings and boil-ups, sushi and meatballs, laksa and latkes. You could visit two restaurants a day for a month and not eat one bad meal (yet still we all wait outside for a table at Depot).

You see, I grew up in 1980s Hamilton, where there weren't many decent restaurants to choose between. As a family, we generally opted for Pizza Hut, so it's ironic how many of the shirts I wear these days on Seven Sharp are made from their old tablecloths.

Good food makes people go "mmmmm", and that's the noise I reckon the city of Auckland is making right now. The streets are crawling with people on their way to or from dinner, either pleasantly full or hungry with anticipation.

So who do we thank for this thriving scene: the restaurateurs? The wait staff? The chefs? Nah, thank the Reserve Bank.

The moment a 20 per cent deposit slips out of your grasp, a night of eating, drinking and forgetting starts to look pretty good.

Jesse Mulligan, originally from Hamilton, presents TVNZ's Seven Sharp.