The Grove has taken out the Supreme title in the 2010 Metro Audi ‘Restaurant Of The Year’ Awards!  Congratulations to proud owner Michael P. Dearth and his team.

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

The Metro Top 50 List is announced for 2010:

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”

MenuMania.co.nz has topped the list for popularity amongst all New Zealand food and beverage websites

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 chef & Meilleur Ouvrier (French Master Craftsman) joined as a new partner, in a business mentoring capacity [though as of late 2011, Mark Gregory is no longer able to participate as an agent of MenuMania, due to issues of conflict against the remaining MenuMania owners and numerous breaches of his shareholders agreement].

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