Whangarei: A Deco
Far North: Puretastes

Auckland: Barolo, Cibo, Clooney, Delicious, dine by Peter Gordon at SKYCITY, Harbourside, Merediths, Mondial, O’Connell Street Bistro, O’Sarracino, Ponsonby Road Bistro, Prego, Red Elephant, Rocco, Soul Bar & Bistro, SPQR, The French Cafe, The Grove, Tribeca, Two Fifteen Bistro, Bracu

Tauranga: Mount Bistro

Hamilton: Palate

Taupo: Bistro Lodge

Hastings: Black Barn Bistro, Elephant Hill, Terroir Restaurant at Craggy Range, Vidal Winery

Martinborough: Wendy Campbell’s

Wellington: Ambeli, Bisque on Bolton, Gusto Bistro, Martin Bosley’s, Matterhorn, Ortega, Red Ginger

Nelson: Hopgoods, Bouterey’s

Marlborough: Gibb’s

Christchurch: Pescatore, Schwass, Saggio

Queenstown: Botswana Butchery

Oamaru: Riverstone Kitchen

Dunedin: Plato, Two Chefs Bistro

The Grove is certainly a recipe for creating winning cusine, as evidenced by the fact that Sid Sahrawat, previously a chef at The Grove, is thrilled to have won ‘Best New Restaurant’ for his own brand new temple of fine food, Sidart Restaurant in Ponsonby.

Other winners include:

Dine by Peter Gordon, Best Dining Room

Cable Bay Vineyard , Best Service

The Engine Room, Best Local Bistro (for the third year in a row!)

Te Whau, Best Rural Restaurant

Gen Ogata from Sake Bar 601, Restaurant Personality of the Year Award, chosen by public vote

Cibo Restaurant, Best Smart Casual Restaurant.   Comments from judges described Cibo as serving “inventive and expertly cooked fusion food, backed by charming and attentive service in one of the city’s most delightful indoor/outdoor environments.”

The Metro judges seclected the winners from a list of its Top 50 after an intensive judging process.  Restaurants receive marks for their food, service, wine, physical surroundings, plus the X-factor (for which the judges ask themselves, “How much do I want to come back?”).  Five different judges in total visited The Grove in order to select it as  The Supreme Winner this year.

The Grove open in 2004, and has certainly earned it’s reputation as a star performer, serving brilliant, highly original food.  Metro’s judges were unanimous in their praise of The Grove: “Its polish, the taste of the food, the lengthy wine list and marvellous cocktails, its attention to detail, and the fact that the place is constantly evolving”.

Competition at the top end was very fierce this year, pointed out Metro editor Bevan Rapson, “Four restaurants had a serious chance of taking the prize.  In the end, though, The Grove was a deserving winner.”

Judges described the reasons behind their final decision: “The Grove does something rather magical. You know that sense you sometimes get in a fine dining establishment, that you’re meant to sit up straight and whisper? Not here. The Grove, with its wooden floor, bare brick walls and New York-loft style windows looks like a bistro yet it is elegant, without question, and the service is of the highest standard.”

Metro’s judges highlighted the star of the show as The Grove’s new chef, Benjamin Bayly saying that “The place has always had good chefs, but Bayly is something else. His food fits. Like the environment, it is both relaxed and sophisticated.”

The full list of winners is in the May 2010 issue of Metro.

Source: Scoop

Metro magazine’s annual Top 50 list of the best restaurants around Auckland has been announced.  And even though it’s been challenging for many restaurants during the 2009 recession, nine restaurants that opened last year were good enough to gain a hard-won mention on the list.

They were: Sidart (Ponsonby), Casita Miro (on Waiheke), Ponsonby Rd Bistro (Ponsonby), The Mulberry (Mt Eden), Coco’s Cantina (Karangahape Rd), Ella Cafe & Lounge (Ponsonby), La Cigale (Parnell), Mondial Cafe Bar(Grey Lynn), Teppan Dining Bowz (Epsom).

Next Monday night, 26 April, a gala dinner reveal winners of the 15 categories and the Supreme Winner of the Metro Audi Restaurant of the Year Award for 2010.  The event will be attended by those ranking amongst the 50 top restaurants, along with media and distinguished guests.

The genre of restaurant that has seen the greatest growth in the Top 50, is bistro or bar-bistro.  All but two of the brand new restaurants are in these categories.  A typical Bistro Bar is focused on informal pleasure, where the setting is often a noisy, good-humoured, busy bar.   Bistro restaurants can produce astonishingly good food, given the often casual ambience of the place.

This year the Top 50 List has pinpointed some excellent family-friendly places (like Monsoon Poon, Casita Miro and The Mulberry . There’s no reason not to eat well and have a damn good time, says Metro, just because you’ve got kids in tow.

Details of the restaurants recognised in the 2010 Metro Audi Restaurant of the Year Awards will be published in the May issue of Metro (on sale Tuesday April 27)

Source:  “Scoop”

Pure Indulgence, where you can indulge in some of our Country’s finest cuisine from Sidart, The Dining Room at Mollies, Euro Restaurant & Bar, The Grove Restaurant, Vinnies Restaurant, who will each be offering you entre-sized servings of two or three of their signature dishes.  You will also be treated to tasty morsels and the finest champagne, wine and drinks from other premier specialty food and beverage suppliers.  Stylish fashion items such as jewellery, homeware, electronics and other fabulous gift ideas for Mum will be on offer too.

Self Indulgence, where visitors can meet with consultants from local spas, beauty clinics, nutritionists and life coaches.  You will also find our pamper room here, with everything from mini-massages, to nail and hair stylists.  And for those who desire to know what tomorrow may hold, we have a range of local psychic and tarot card readers on hand to offer insight.

Finish off your experience with Sweet Indulgence, where chocolate, fudge and other delectable treats will be offered for tasting and purchase.  With a Hot Chocolate Café, seminars, plus our Paper Plus Book Store, this space will be the place to explore, be inspired, or simply relax.

On Mother’s Day Sunday, three wonderful authors will be having a chat about their books, while guests enjoy a glass of bubbles and the ever popular High Tea.

Top it all off with a ‘Gentleman’s Retreat’ for the guys, and a dedicated kids-zone to provide the perfect destination for Mum for her special weekend.

For more information visit www.indulgenceshow.co.nz or call 0800 001 333

Date: 8-9 May 2010 – Mother’s Day Weekend
Time: Saturday, 8th May – 10am-8pm; Sunday 9th May – 10am-6pm
Venue: Ellerslie Convention Centre, Auckland
Cost: $16.00 presale and $18 at the Gate
Children: $5 (under 4 years free)

For some time MenuMania.co.nz has topped the list of Nielsen//NetRatings as NZ’s busiest & most popular dining & eating out website. The results recently published by leading international Internet analyst “Experian Hitwise” (www.hitwise.com/nz/) show that the popularity of MenuMania.co.nz with the dining public of New Zealand has put it in first position, as the busiest of all NZ hospitality industry websites.

Experian Hitwise – Category Spotlight

Food and Beverage – Restaurants and Catering New Zealand

This category focuses on restaurants, eating places, restaurant guides, and catering services. All of the data below is based on All sites > Weekly rankings for the week ending 21/11/2009 > Ranks by ‘Visits’.

Rank   Website

1. MenuMania

2. Pizza Hut New Zealand

3. Domino’s Pizza

4. KFC New Zealand

5. Hell Pizza

6. DineOut

7. Menus .co .nz

8. Eatout .co .nz

9. McDonald’s New Zealand

10. Subway – International Locations

MenuMania.co.nz is NZ’s leading online restaurant guide, reservation and review web site.  It offers diners the opportunity to find details about restaurants and cafes in their community and wherever they travel. Diners can see menus, check prices and special offers, read and write reviews, make bookings, and send restaurant info to  friends.  Plus with a new feature in 2009 on MenuMania’s home page, visitors can now also find wedding venues, conference or meeting spaces and out caterers.

Following in the footsteps of social networking sites, diners can read or write dining reviews which inspire and create consumer confidence to perhaps try somewhere different.  Simply put, its word of mouth – amplified, in the last month alone MenuMania has helped 115,000 different diners choose where to eat, while diners explored just under 450,000 web pages on MenuMania.

MenuMania.co.nz enables the owners of restaurants, vineyards, pubs, cafes & takeaway places from Logan Brown in Wellington to Cafe Cezanne in Ponsonby to publish their menus, dining promotions, photos, ambience and location information on the website as well as on the recently released MenuMania iPhone application.

MenuMania.co.nz was first launched in 2006 by Cristian Rosescu, Justin McCormack and Karen Gibson, in 2009 chef restaurateur Mark Gregory joined as a new partner.

Cristian who heads up the in-house technology and web development team for MenuMania, says after three years of site development that “It’s incredibly exciting to see so many people enjoying and using MenuMania, and most fulfilling of all they keep coming back over and over, the site is great and we love that people use it.”

The “Hitwise” results are particularly important when the hospitality sector is facing one of it’s toughest years ever.  Restaurant owners can now promote their menus and special dining offers or take round the clock reservations. The dining public of New Zealand are now using the Internet in greater and greater numbers when making their meal buying decisions.  This is great news for New Zealand hospitality and tourism.

MenuMania’s industry support and charitable initiatives in 2009 saw the launch of free and unlimited online reservations for diners, community support for “Wellington on a Plate”, Sunday Star-Times “Restaurant Month” and the restaurant industry’s charity DineAid, which is this year supporting City Missions with fund-raising throughout November & December.

Partner and Meilleur Ouvrier Chef Mark Gregory said: ‘MenuMania is a quiet success story of New Zealand innovation, I am exceptionally proud to be part of MenuMania, the team work incredibly hard and the fact that so many diners choose to use MenuMania just motivates us to make it even better.”

Notes: About MenuMania.co.nz

1. November 2009 – MenuMania is listed as New Zealand’s busiest web site in the Hitwise Food & Beverage Category. MenuMania is already listed as New Zealand’s busiest dining web site by Nielsen//NetRatings

2. MenuMania has a search database of over 10,000 restaurants, cafes and takeaways in NZ

3. MenuMania is recognized by both industry associations: (a) The Restaurant Association of NZ (b) The Hospitality Association of NZ and hosts their member restaurants, cafes, pubs and hotels

4. In 2009 MenuMania re-designed the Homepage for the City Guides, launched its iPhone application and mobile friendly website, Free and unlimited online reservations

5. MenuMania supports the restaurant charity DineAid by building and hosting all of its online restaurant sign up and search facilities: www.dineaid.org.nz

RUNNER-UP: Best Smart Dining Metropolitan
Clooney
When Clooney opened, the in-crowd made it their first choice for dining and drinking, attracted by the New York-dramatic décor with its edgy fringe curtains hanging from the raw concrete ceiling to subdivide the vast space.

2009 WINNER: Best Smart Dining Regional
Bouterey’s at 251
Far from the bright lights, in the rural township of Richmond on the outskirts of Nelson, Bouterey’s shows a passion and sophistication that is not often reached.

RUNNER-UP: Best Smart Dining Regional
Pacifica
This turquoise and driftwood decorated bungalow across from the sea belies the sophistication within of Jeremy Rameka’s seriously crafted food.

2009 Winner: Best Casual Dining Metropolitan
Soul Bar & Bistro
One of our out-of-town judges remarked that Soul was one place he would really want to return to, again and again.

RUNNER-UP: Best Casual Dining Metropolitan
Saggio Di Vino
This is New Zealand’s only vinothèque, where for more than 18 years Lisa Scholz and Yommi Pawelke have provided a haven for a glass or two of good wine, accompanying it with well-crafted food.

2009 WINNER: Best Casual Dining Regional
Hopgood’s Restaurant & Bar
Classically trained chef Kevin Hopgood moved from his native England to New Zealand for the lifestyle

RUNNER-UP: Best Casual Dining Regional
Wendy Campbell’s French Bistro
Last year Wendy Campbell’s French Bistro took out the award in this section and it is to Wendy and husband Jim’s credit that, a year on, their standards are as high as ever.

2009 WINNER: Best Neighbourhood Restaurant
Molten
Molten seems a home away from home for Mt Eden locals.

2009 WINNER: Best Winery Restaurant First Equal
Pegasus Bay
Pegasus Bay has taken our top winery award for the second year running, albeit this year tied with Terrôir.
Terrôir at Craggy Range
The set of buildings at Craggy Range is no doubt the area’s most dramatic

At this time of year use frozen raspberries for making this cake, they are full of flavour and cost a tenth the price of fresh.

Recipe
75g unsalted butter
80g castor sugar
Few drops vanilla
80g ground almonds
40g plain flour
2 whole eggs

Raspberry syrup
2 cups frozen raspberries
¼ cup water
¼ cup sugar
Serve with whipped cream or crème fraiche

Preparation
Heat oven to 200C. Spray your chosen single portion cake tins with a baking spray.

Beat butter and sugar together until light and creamy, add the next 4 ingredients and mix well together until smooth. Spoon mix into the 4 cake tins, spread a few frozen raspberries on top and bake for approx 20 minutes until well coloured and golden.

Remove from oven and allow to cool.

For the syrup, dissolve sugar in boiling water then cool slightly before adding the remaining raspberries.

To serve turn cakes out onto serving plates, spoon a healthy mound of raspberries on top and a little whipped cream or crème fraiche.

Anyway I felt as though after all this talk about Wellington on a Plate I really should take the plunge and so booked a table for two for a set lunch at Hippopotamus, located just opposite Te Papa and down from New World. The day was brutally windy – anyone from Wellington will surely know that the weather has been particularly vicious this week – and I was buffetted along like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz as I made my way there. Once inside the Museum Hotel, home of Hippopotamus, I felt as conspicuous as Dorothy when she landed in Munchkinland. My Chuck Taylors, wind-tangled hair and jeans weren’t exactly congruent with the plush carpet, paintings and many chandeliers within the opulent lobby. However my partner (equally large of hair and casual of footwear) and I were treated as though we were Rick Stein and his wife dropping in for lunch. Coats quietly whipped away, thick, heavy linen upon the tables, beautiful glasses never ignored by the waiter - the very idea that we should pour our own water was a foreign concept to the wait staff at Hippopotamus.

We were seated with a glorious view over the darkened, windswept waterfront (except I’ve been watching Season 2 of The Wire and can’t see shipping containers without making unfortunate associations) and presented with the set menu, which offered a choice of starters, mains and desserts, of which we were to choose two. Although the starters looked tempting I’m really a dessert gal so opted for that and a main. Unfortunately the polenta and some kind of shank from I forget which animal was off the menu – I do love polenta - but in its place a cassoulet of duck and pork belly. I love duck and it was cassoulet kind of weather, plus our waiter pronounced it so charmingly in his French accent that we both chose it.

The cassoulet was exquisite – generously filled with meat so tender and juicy it near on dissolved in my mouth. The beans were perfect - if they were out of a can it they didn’t taste so. The portion was enormous – I’m a huge eater but struggled to finish it and the simple heartiness was the perfect antidote to the weather outside. We were offered a selection of wines, of which we both chose the pinot noir which was everything the waiter described it as. I can’t pretend I drink a lot of good wine so it is such a revelation when I do have it.

For dessert I had vanilla panna cotta and my partner the chocolate tart. Desserts are one of the things I really judge a restaurant on – so often they are bought in, served without care and overpriced. The desserts we were offered at Hippopotamus were, luckily, marvelous, if they hadn’t been made from scratch backstage they did a very good job of hiding it. Panna cotta is all about texture and mine was perfect, just utterly, utterly smooth and carefully occupying that place between solid and liquid. It also came with a panna cotta buddy of coffee cream and some deliciously spiced prunes. My partner’s chocolate tart was also beautiful – layered with excellent pastry, smooth chocolate and caramel, with an ascerbic dollop of orange cream on top.

The whole experience was an absolute joy and I wished I could have stayed longer and lingered over a doubtless excellent coffee, but the inbox and spreadsheets were calling me. I was heavily reluctant to leave the warm quiet interior of the restaurant for the bitter outside world, but was thankful for Wellington on a Plate for providing the opportunity for me to see this world at all. Hippopotamus is incredible but very expensive and I’m quite sure I never would have gone there had they not had this set lunch option. To be honest I’ll probably not go back unless I win the lottery BUT would have no problem recommending it to anyone with lots of money. If you go to Logan Brown regularly and don’t flinch at their prices then this is most definitely the place for you. If, like me, you read about Logan Brown in Cuisine magazine and can only dream of going there, why not add Hippopotamus to your list of places to daydream about?

Hippopotamus

04 802 8935

If you’re reading this and thinking “I’m picking up on what she’s putting down” why not jump on over and see what’s happening on my food blog, Hungry and Frozen. As recommended by the Sunday Star-Times.

Fine Food New Zealand is organised for those behind the scenes of NZ’s flourishing culinary industry. It will be run by the organisers of The Food Show, along with Aussie’s largest, most prestigious food trade show, Fine Food Australia.

The 3 day international food, drink & equipment exhibition is anticipated to be one of the most important events of 2010 for food and food service professionals.