Paris Butter opened in 2016 as a classic French bistro, and turned into one of Auckland’s most ambitious fine diners in 2019 when chef Zennon Wijlens joined founder Nick Honeyman as co-owner. Wijlens, who cooked at Tetsuya’s and Momofuku Seiōbo in Sydney before coming home, was named Cuisine New Zealand Chef of the Year for 2023/24. The restaurant now holds three hats and was named Metro’s Best Fine Dining Restaurant for 2025, with Honeyman splitting his year between Herne Bay and his Michelin-starred Le Petit Léon in the south of France.
Logan Brown occupies a 1920s former bank on Cuba Street, diners sit beneath a six-metre domed ceiling ringed by Corinthian columns. Al Brown and Steve Logan opened it in 1996, deliberately keeping the white tablecloths and formal service while dropping the stuffiness usually attached to them. Brown has since moved on to other ventures, but Logan remains, alongside chef and co-owner Shaun Clouston, whose pāua ravioli has stayed on the menu since the mid-90s and is still the dish most diners ask for by name.
Amisfield sits on a 200-acre vineyard beside Lake Hayes, between Queenstown and Arrowtown, where the kitchen and the cellar door share a single piece of land. Founded in 1988, the restaurant has built its reputation on hyper-local, foraged and hunted ingredients, native mushrooms still attached to the branches they grew on, charcuterie cured in-house, dishes built entirely around what a small network of fishermen, hunters and farmers can supply that week. It holds three hats from Cuisine’s Good Food Guide, a ranking it has carried since 2019.
Attica opened in a converted suburban bank building in Ripponlea, and was struggling under two earlier chefs before its owners hired Ben Shewry in 2005, giving him full creative control. Shewry, who grew up foraging on an isolated New Zealand farm before moving to Australia, built a ten-course menu almost entirely around native ingredients, bunya nuts, saltbush, green ants, finger limes, much of it foraged near his home on the Bellarine Peninsula. Attica has appeared on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list every year since 2010 and is currently the top-ranked restaurant in Australia.
Bennelong sits inside the smallest of the Sydney Opera House’s sails, named for Woollarawarre Bennelong, a senior Eora man who was a key figure in early colonial Sydney. The restaurant built its reputation on showcasing Australian produce in deconstructed versions of comfort classics, John Dory under umami butter, a reworked lamington for dessert, with a separate “Cured and Cultured” counter for a more casual pre-theatre option. It holds two hats in the 2026 Good Food Guide.
Brae opened in December 2013 on a 30-acre former farm in the Otways, ninety minutes south-west of Melbourne, bought specifically so the kitchen could grow what it serves. Chef Dan Hunter, who spent years at Spain’s Mugaritz before returning home, built the menu around a daily harvest from the property, vegetables, fruit, herbs, even the wheat for the bread, milled and baked on site. Brae has held three hats since 2019 and made the World’s 50 Best list within four years of opening. Six guest suites let diners stay the night rather than drive back to Melbourne.
