20 of the best Auckland restaurants
Auckland serves up some of the best dining in New Zealand. Here’s where to go for the city’s top restaurants.
Auckland — known locally as Tāmaki Makaurau — is New Zealand’s largest and most diverse city in the nation.
Auckland’s food scene is influenced by cultures from across the Pacific, Asia, and Europe, testament to the eclectic origins of the peole whocall the city home.
The city offers an equally diverse range of neighbourhoods, from the sleek Britomart precinct, where you’ll find more upscale eateries, to the raucous and delightfully non-conformist Karangahape Road.
Exploring Auckland’s restaurants means exploring the city itself, crisscrossing areas such as Grey Lynn and Ponsonby.
Diving in Auckland dining is also an exploration of New Zealand’s cuisine, which is reaching new heights of distinction as Māori and Māori influenced chefs elevate indigenous culinary traditions and ingredients.
Many Auckland restaurants are now looking to answer the question ‘what is New Zealand cuisine?’ Feast on some of New Zealand’s finest produce and ingredients, revisit nostalgic New Zealand favourites, and discover what’s happening at the forefront of modern Pacific cuisine.
Here are the best Auckland restaurants to visit.
jump ahead.
The best restaurants in Auckland CBD
Restaurants in Ponsonby and Grey Lynn
Karangahape Road restaurants
Further afield
Top restaurants in central Auckland
Auckland’s city centre is home to many of the city’s best restaurants, particularly fine dining establishments.
1. Mr Morris
The sleek Britomart precinct is home to some of the city’s best restaurants.
Among these is Mr Morris, opened by chef Michael Meredith in 2020 with the aim of defining a modern Pacific and New Zealand dining experience. The food, ranging from New Zealand grass fed beef and green-lipped mussels to fire-roasted tuatua (a type of shellfish) is local, ethical, and seasonal.
2. Onslow
Onslow is a restaurant on Princes Street in Auckland, close to Albert Park. It’s run by chef Josh Emett and his wife Helen Emett — the pair are also behind Waiheke Island’s Oyster Inn, another must-try Auckland restaurant.
Onslow’s focus is on doing the classics, and doing them well. The menu features simple, approachable food with a focus on provenance.
That means you can order some of New Zealand’s staple dishes — lamb shoulder, beef cheek, duck breast — but with elegant accompaniments like red wine raised cabbage or black olive caramel.
3. Homeland
In Wynyard Quarter, chef Peter Gordon helms, Homeland, a ‘food embassy for Aotearoa and the Pacific.’ On the menu, you’ll see creamed paua from the Chatham Islands, and pork belly cooked in the traditional hāngī (earth oven) style.
Kūmara, a sweet potato that features in a lot of traditional Maori cooking, is wood roasted and served with pesto made from kawakawa, a native plant with healing properties.
4. The Grove
Found just off Saint Patrick’s Square, the Grove is one of Auckland’s most prestigious fine-dining restaurants.
The cuisine at the Grove is focused on defining New Zealand food. That means a focus on the seasonality of small New Zealand suppliers, and dishes that let individual ingredients shine.
This restaurant specialises in degustation menus, so it’s a place to visit for special occasions.
It’s the kind of restaurant where you’ll eat churros with caviar or truffle, lamb kebab with black garlic and jalapeño emulsion, or oyster bánh mì.
4. Hello Beasty
The best restaurant in the Viaduct Harbour is Hello Beasty, a restaurant which serves East Asian fusion cuisine.
Influences include Japanese, Chinese, and Korean cuisine, resulting in a menu with creative dishes, like the slow-cooked New Zealand lamb in Sichuan sauce.
5. Cassia
Modern Indian restaurant Cassia marries chef Sid Sahrawat’s innovative approach to traditional Indian dishes with fresh New Zealand ingredients.
Cassia closed its Fort Street premises earlier in the year after flood damage from Cyclone Gabrielle, and recently reopened in the Skycity precinct in central Auckland.
The menu includes a range of innovative dishes, like charred eggplant with buffalo curd and tamarind, and a tandoori chicken taco (pictured above) which involves, chicken seekh kebab cooked in tandoor served with dry korma, coriander relish, pickled carrot and cucumber.
kingi
Kingi is a sustainable seafood restaurant located in Hotel Britomart.
The restaurant is has an understated elegance and down-to-earth nature. The chef and owner Tom Hishon is passionate about sustainability and creating creative seafood dishes.
The menu is a highlight reel of New Zealand’s seafood bounty, with oysters, kina, green-lipped mussels, and starters that include deep-fried Chatham Islands blue cod wings – the wings are a part of the fish that would often just be thrown away.
It’s one of chef Peter Gordon’s go-to restaurants. “I took Yotam Ottolenghi there and he loved it,” he told BBC.
6. Culprit
Culprit serves nostalgic New Zealand cuisine with a modern global edge. They offer chefs choice menus that hero local suppliers.
One of their most iconic dishes are their burnt brussels sprouts, fried until crisp and slightly bitter, tossed in a malt vinegar dressing and coated in home made Kiwi onion ranch, in homage to salt and vinegar chips.
The fact that they can make an unpopular vegetable a sought after menu item is testament to what the Culprit team can do in the kitchen.
Little Culprit, run by the same team, across the road is also one of my favourite Auckland Central bars. The interior is delightfully cosy and the wine list is supreme, so it’s worth stopping by before or after, or any time really.
7. Depot Eatery & Oyster Bar
Depot is a lively, industrial-chic restaurant by TV chef Al Brown.
The restaurant features an oyster bar, where you can sample oysters from Waiheke Island, the Coromandel, or Kerikeri in Northland. Each location offers oysters with slightly different finishes — see if you can tell the difference between a sweet, creamy, or briny finish.
8. Ahi
In the glittering Commercial Bay shopping centre right in the heart of Auckland, is Ahi (which means fire in te reo Māori).
Chef Ben Bayly — who also runs the exceptional restauarants Aosta and Little Aosta in Arrowtown near Queenstown — not only sources ingredients from around New Zealand but from the restaurant’s own organic kitchen garden.
On the menu are wild-shot red deer and wallaby tartare, made with meat from wild wallabies hunted in the South Island. You can also try delicacies like farmed baby paua crumpet with fermented peanut butter and celery leaf mayonaise.
Ahi lets you tour New Zealand’s wine regions as comprehensively as the unique flavours of the country.
The carefully curated wine list at Ahi represents the diversity of New Zealand’s wine regions and styles, from Central Otago pinot noir to Hawke’s Bay viognier.
9. Alma
Another Britomart restaurant, Alma, is inspired by Andalusian cuisine. Alma’s food style embraces smokey flame-charred flavors from this far off region while remaining committed to seasonal, local produce like Te Matuku oysters from Waiheke Island.
10. Metita
Metita is the latest brainchild of Michael Meredith, the chef behind Mr Morris.
The menu draws inspiration from his Samoan roots and focuses on sustainably caught seafood and local ingredients.
11. Amano
Amano is a stalwart of Auckland’s dining scene. It’s just as popular for brunch and lunch as it is for dinner, so the spacious, light filled restaurant close to Auckland’s waterfront is full to the brim throughout the day.
The food is loosely Italian, with plenty of fresh pasta, pizza, and pastries.
As well as the restaurant, Amano also has a bakery and take away counter, where you can pick up slices of pizza, fresh loaves of sourdough, or freshly-baked goods on the go.
Top restaurants in Ponsonby and Grey Lynn
Ponsonby and Grey Lynn are quieter and more residential than central Auckland, but the calibre of restaurants in these neighbourhoods is superb.
12. Ada
Ada is located in a former convent. The renovated nunnery is now home to The Convent Hotel, one of Auckland’s more creative boutique hotels, and Ada.
Ada’s menu is Mediterranean inspired with some distinctly New Zealand twists.
If you’re inspired to explore Maori cuisine, head to Ada to try their hangi pork belly with potato mousse, crispy onions, cured egg yolk, chive oil, or hangi potatoes with chèvre, truffle oil and porcini soil.
Or tuck into rēwena fried bread served with local oyster mushroom and blue cheese.
13. Paris Butter
Paris Butter started life in Herne Bay as a classic French bistro and has evolved into a restaurant that celebrates the best New Zealand produce and ingredients, often riffing on nostalgic staples.
The restaurant is now recognised as one of the best in Auckland — Zennon was named Chef of the Year in 2023’s Cuisine Good Food Awards.
Dishes are elaborate and beautifully plated, with morsels like baked snapper topped with a black pudding crumb and accompanied by grilled asparagus topped with vintage caviar.
14. Sidart
Known for its innovative New Zealand cuisine and degustation menus, Sidart offers a fine dining experience in a stylish setting on Ponsonby Road.
Helmed by chef Lesley Chandra, who is originally from Fiji, you can expect dishes like trevally coconut with yuzu cream, inspired by the traditional Fijian dish Kokoda which Lesley ate as a child growing up in Fiji.
Karangahape Road restaurants
While Britomart and the central city are home to glitzy restaurants with degustation menus, Karangahape Road is home more down-to-earth restaurants with a lively neighbourhood feel.
Some of my favourite places to eat in Auckland are along Karangahape Road — here you’ll find everything from Spanish inspired cuisine to Malaysian BYOs.
15. Pici
Pici is a tiny restaurant hidden away in St Kevin’s Arcade on Karangahape Road.
Pici is always packed to the rafters with people seeking out their handcrafted pasta dishes. Choose from fettuccine, pappardelle or spaghettini, and make sure to try the cacio e pepe, one of Auckland’s most loved pasta dishes.
16. Cotto
One of the things I love most about dining in Auckland is that you don’t have to go to a high end restaurant for a top-notch experience.
Cotto is one of Karangahape Road’s highlights. The food is stunning, th
Cotto is strong on the vegetarian offerings, with Burrata smashed beetroot black olive caper parsley
Dumplings spinach goats cheese sage butter
17. Apéro
Chef Leslie comes from Toulouse in France, and she prepares food the same way her family has for generations — using local produce to make simple but delicious meals.
Where possible, ingredients are sourced from sustainable, free-range, and organic suppliers.
Apero is a welcoming Karangahape road restaurant, with an interiour defined by exposed brick walls, artfully worn wooden furniture and warm lighting.
Snail tortellini? Homemade fettuccini with fresh truffle? You’ll have to pop in to Apero to see what delicacies are on the menu.
18. Bar Magda
Bat Magda is one of Auckland’s hidden gems. This new wave Filipino restaurant is tucked away downstairs off Cross Street, behind Karangahape Road.
The bar and bistro serves New Zealand seasonal produce with a Filipino bent.
That means dishes like pork and duck albondigas, a staple recipe from the chef’s grandmother, served with fresh corn polenta and sambal biyaning.
Further afield
While I’m guilty of spending most of my time in Auckland’s central neighbourhoods, there are many excellent restaurants further afield.
Dominion Road is one of Auckland’s great dining destinations, with a plethora of top-notch dumpling and noodle houses. Waiheke Island is also a true culinary destination and it’s worth making the trip over for the restaurants as much as the wineries.
19. Cazador
Cazador is a family-owned restaurant on Dominion Road, run by Dariush Lolaiy and Rebecca Smidt. As the name — and multitude of taxidermied heads inside the restaurant — suggests, Cazador is all about meat.
Cazador is a top restaurant to visit if you want to try a wide variety of game meats from New Zealand.
The meat on their menus is sourced from New Zealand hunters and includes dishes like grilled duck hearts and braised boar shoulder.
You can also shop their deli charcuterie, with options like game salami, heritage pork lonzo, and game terrine.
20. The Oyster Inn
If it’s oysters you want, try the Oyster Inn on Waiheke. It rates as one of the island’s best restaurants and is famous for serving oysters on the same day they are harvested from the waters around Waiheke.
Auckland restaurant FAQs
Do you need to book Auckland restaurants?
It’s a good idea to book Auckland restaurants in advance, as many of the most popular places fill up quickly. If you don’t mind waiting, some restaurants will put you on a wait list at the door and give you a call when a table frees up.
What should you wear to dinner in Auckland?
Even Auckland’s fanciest restaurants have a relaxed dress code. You don’t need to wear a dinner jacket or formal clothing to dine out in Auckland — a tidy casual outfit is fine.
Are there any Michelin starred restaurants in New Zealand?
There are no Michelin starred restaurants in New Zealand, as we do not yet have the Michelin star system. Instead, we have a hat system run by Cuisine Magazine, so keep an eye out for ‘hatted’ restaurants instead of starred ones.
New Zealand does have a handful of chefs who have helped restaurants achieve Michelin stars (among them Josh Emmet, who has worked with Gordon Ramsay as head chef at London's Savoy Grill, which has one Michelin star).
How can you eat for cheap in Auckland?
Auckland restaurants can get expensive, so one way to eat at great places for less is to book with First Table. You might have to eat at odd hours, but you’ll get 50% off your bill.
I hope you enjoyed these Auckland restaurant recommendations — dining in Auckland is a truly fabulous experience.
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