The 100 Best Places to Eat and Drink in New Zealand

Ben Bayly's fine dining room sits above Commercial Bay with harbour light flooding through the windows and a menu built almost entirely from New Zealand produce, some of it grown in his own kitchen garden. Māori techniques like hāngi share the menu with Japanese-inflected ideas, which sounds like a manifesto but eats like a meal. It holds a Michelin star, and the room feels like it knows that without making it your problem.

A 19-seat brass counter wraps around an open kitchen where everything on the menu is designed to be shared, the name being Māori for exactly that. This is fine dining in Christchurch, Michelin-starred, but run with the warmth of a dinner party at someone's house, which is the point. The chef did time at Claridge's; his wife runs the room. Regulars come back as much for her as for the food.

The word "tala" means story, and a Michelin-starred multi-course tasting menu in Parnell is the format the chef uses to tell his. Henry Onesemo's cooking centers on Samoan tradition, rendered with a precision that makes the heritage feel expansive rather than museumified. Counter seats put you closest to the kitchen, and the team narrates each dish with the ease of people who have explained it a hundred times and still mean it.

Meat cleavers double as door handles, which sets the tone before you've ordered a drink. This cocktail bar sits inside a lakefront steakhouse in Queenstown, dressed up in plush contemporary style despite looking like a colonial cottage from the outside. The lake views do a lot of the heavy lifting in summer, and the crowd skews toward people who've had a good day on the slopes and don't mind showing it.

A casual pasta spot on Cuba Street where everything comes from fresh in-house dough made with free-range eggs and South Island semolina. The menu is short, the Bolognese is generous enough to silence the table, and a weekly special keeps regulars coming back. A long communal table makes you friends whether you planned on it or not. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which in this case means good food without the performance.

Northern Italian cooking in a gold-rush town feels like it shouldn't work, yet here we are. Aosta is a sit-down restaurant in historic Arrowtown built around the produce of Central Otago, with Ben Bayly as executive chef and a menu that runs the full Italian structure from cicchetti through to dolci. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a room that takes the food seriously without making you feel underdressed for it.

Goat's cheese croquettes and sausages charged by length: this French-leaning wine bar on K Road operates on its own cheerful logic. The Michelin Bib Gourmand goes to a room where the person running the floor will ask about your mood before recommending a glass, and the blackboard menu changes with whatever the kitchen feels like doing. Neighborhoody in the way that most neighborhoods are not lucky enough to have.

Hunting trophies line the walls, and the menu at this Dominion Road restaurant makes that decor feel like a mission statement rather than decoration. It's a meat-forward dinner spot built around sustainable animals butchered and aged on site, from house-cured charcuterie through to wild venison. The Feast menu is the move if you want the full tour. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and quail on the specials board is a good night to show up.

Focaccia baked in-house and charred on the grill is a good sign, and at Earl it sets the tone for the rest of the menu. This bright, open-kitchen bistro on Lichfield Street runs on seasonal local produce handled in a quietly European way, with sharing plates and the kind of warmth that makes you stay longer than planned. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, and the booth regulars look entirely unsurprised.

The arcade tables outside belong to the café across the way until evening, when this tiny Lebanese spot claims them back and spreads a family-style feast across the borrowed furniture. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the food earns the fuss: homemade pide, hummus that's properly creamy, and chicken thighs that drip. The sharing format and the keen prices make the whole thing feel less like a meal out and more like someone's mother is feeding you.

Three tables, a few counter seats, and a short menu that changes often: Londo is a compact wine bar in Merivale where the chef runs things with enough enthusiasm to make the room feel twice its size. The dishes are meant for sharing and tend toward the generous end of small-plates logic. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and easy to see why when the food hits the table. Local natural wines, cocktails, and craft beers cover the drinks side.

Akaroa salmon and Lumina lamb anchor a sharing-plates menu that moves between Andalusia and the Middle East, with most of the produce pulled from the Canterbury region. Odeon is a relaxed Mediterranean restaurant on a block thick with competition, and the "Just Feed Me" option hands the choices to the kitchen if you'd rather not decide. The wine list leans organic and biodynamic, and it holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A 1930s church moved to the Frankton countryside and turned into a wood-fired pizza restaurant, which is a sentence that earns its own pause. The sprawling terrace handles summer crowds; a covered pavilion steps in when Queenstown winters arrive. The menu leans Italian, with cacio e pepe alongside the pizzas, and the pecorino churros exist in defiance of category. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A former bar that found its calling as a dining room, The Monday Room sits inside a heritage building on High Street and runs on the logic that food is better shared. The chef leans on seasonal local produce to reimagine European classics, and the menu scales up from a set menu to a full banquet. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the format rewards groups willing to surrender the ordering to the kitchen.

You reach the bar by descending a staircase and passing through a doorway flanked by paint tins, which sets up one expectation and then doesn't deliver it. Caretaker is a dim, NYC-styled speakeasy cocktail bar with Sunday jazz and bartenders who'd rather talk to you than hand you a laminated menu. Tell them what you're in the mood for and let them build something around it.

A bamboo wall on a Ponsonby side street is the only hint that anything is behind it. Cocoro is a quiet, low-lit Japanese restaurant where the wood is simple, the mood is calm, and dinner arrives as a multi-course procession shaped by the idea that no meal can ever be repeated. The kitchen leans into that with a seriousness that stops just short of solemn, which is exactly the right distance.

A cocktail bar on Tory Street where the menu runs from pre-Prohibition classics to drinks built around white anchovy oil and oyster shell-infused gin. The list treats history as a starting point rather than a destination, so you can order something a century old or something that sounds like a dare. Either way, the bartenders clearly mean business, and the kind of crowd that notices will find them here.

No sign, no menu, no way of knowing if it's even open: that's the point. Mapu is a chef's table in a Lyttelton laneway where Chilean-born Giulio Sturla seats six people per sitting and asks you to simply trust him. The ticketing system online is how you find a spot, and finding the place itself is left as an exercise for the guest. It holds a 50 Discovery recognition from The 50.

A neighbourhood bistro that moved into a former post office and never looked back, with chalkboards scrawled fresh daily and so many plants the dining room is halfway to a greenhouse. The cooking leans into Kiwi classics built from seasonal local produce, the kind of food that makes a Tuesday dinner feel like an occasion. Regulars from the nearby business district fill the room most nights, and they rarely need to read the menu.

The puffy, charred crust here comes from Italian flour, fior di latte, and tomatoes shipped from Italy, which is a long way to go for a pizza in Ponsonby, but the dough is contemporary Neapolitan and the logic holds. This is a casual, affordable pizzeria with three Auckland locations, all informal and relaxed. The chef, Enis Baçova, arrived as a waiter and worked his way to owner, which is a good origin story for a place ranked 49th on 50 Top Pizza World.

An auto rickshaw parked by reception sets the tone at this Indian restaurant on Federal Street, where the room goes dark and moody with high tables, low sofas, and a large bar. The menu moves across the subcontinent from street snacks to slow-cooked curries, with a clear fondness for meat and a tandoor that does serious work on the lamb chops. Order the okra fries immediately and pair them with a beer while you figure out the rest.

The open kitchen inside the InterContinental sets the tone: this is a full-service Middle Eastern and Mediterranean restaurant that works equally well for a client lunch or a long dinner with someone you're trying to impress. The room is bright and contemporary, the kind of scale only a hotel can pull off without feeling cavernous. The tasting menu is a good way in if you have the time to sit and let the kitchen show off.

An open wood fire anchors the kitchen at this corner restaurant in Britomart, and the counter seats are the right call if you want to watch the team actually use it. The menu runs Andalusian, meaning the cooking pulls from enough cultures that fish, veg, and meat all get their own section. Most dishes come in half sizes, which makes sharing optional rather than mandatory. Sherry lovers will find the list attentive to their needs.

The meatballs come in a crayfish version here, which tells you something about where Italian-American cooking lands in New Zealand. This North Wharf restaurant leans into homemade pasta and wood-fired bistecca, with a wine list that's almost exclusively Italian. The room gets loud and full, and the service team handles it without breaking stride.

A subterranean Filipino bar and restaurant on Cross Street that occupies a space with a colourful past, which the dim lighting and speakeasy atmosphere do nothing to dispel. The chef grew up in the Philippines and brings those flavours downtown with personal twists. The cocktails are a serious draw, the Magdatini in particular. Michelin has the place in its Guide.

The ageing room sits right next to the kitchen, visible and unapologetic, a glass cabinet full of Canterbury grass-fed beef doing its slow, dark work. This is a steakhouse, all long tables and booths in a moody industrial room, where the meat goes into a Spanish charcoal oven and comes out with serious intent. Sides run more creative than the usual, and the Akaroa King salmon is there for anyone who wandered in with a steak-lover.

The rib-eye here gets 55 days of in-house dry-aging before it goes over mānuka and apple wood, which tells you most of what you need to know about the priorities. This is a steakhouse in Wellington's CBD, tucked into a historic building whose tall windows and high ceilings give it none of the dark, leathery gloom the genre usually insists on. Lumina lamb and market fish round out the menu for anyone who wandered in under peer pressure.

A big, bold brasserie that leans hard into the European classics, with a menu that swings comfortably from salt cod croquettes to braised beef cheek with escargots and a Paris-Brest that earns its place on the dessert list. The kitchen has a classical French and Italian education and makes no apologies for it. The kind of room where a long lunch can stretch past what you planned, and the wine list by the glass quietly encourages that.

Bao, potstickers, pork belly with crackling that shatters, prawn and crab toast; Hello Beasty is a loud, shared-plates restaurant pulling from Japan, Korea, and China without committing to any one flag. It sits in a busy part of Auckland's waterfront and still manages to feel like a find. The room runs loud and the service team stays composed no matter how deep into the weeds the night gets, which is most nights.

An open fireplace anchors the main dining room at this two-floor steakhouse inside the Sofitel Complex, where charcoal-cooked Angus from New Zealand shares the menu with Wagyu from Australia and Japan. The wine list runs to over 40 by the glass, which is either very generous or a trap, depending on how the evening goes. The kind of place you go when the occasion demands red meat and no apologies.

A long, narrow dining room with an open kitchen visible through an arch at the far end sets the tone at this contemporary New Zealand restaurant in Grafton. The chef runs tasting menus of five or eight courses, built around seasonal local produce, alongside a shorter à la carte for the less committed. The intimate booths make it a reliable date-night call. The Michelin Guide has it on their selected list.

The room takes its colors from the Pacific, all ocean blues and island textures, with an open kitchen at one end keeping things lively. Michael Meredith named this restaurant after his mother, whose cooking sent him into the kitchen in the first place, and the Samoan menu follows that logic. Wood-fired snapper, crispy pork hock, and panikeke to start, the fried doughnut kind, not the pancake kind.

Shane Cotton's mural of pots marks the door of this restaurant tucked into a Britomart heritage building, where distressed walls and pale oak give the room a warmth that feels earned rather than designed. The open kitchen is the centrepiece, turning out New Zealand and Pacific flavours with a serious hand on the grill and enough finesse elsewhere to keep things interesting. The kind of place where the room and the food both look better than they're trying to.