For almost two decades, Denizen has been dedicated to providing a positive springboard for New Zealand hospitality, supporting the industry that is vital to this nation’s culture. So I watched last week’s Michelin announcements with genuine interest. It was a proud moment for many, and I extend my sincere congratulations to those recognised. Acknowledgement on the international stage is never accidental, and the immense work required to bring any establishment to the point where it can be anointed with such an honour deserves to be celebrated.
None of which is to diminish the applause. But it is worth being honest about how the guide came to be here. New Zealand was not plucked from the global dining atlas by a roaming panel of fascinated gastronomes; our inclusion was pursued and paid for as an investment in international tourism, a bid to place us on the global foodie map. And therein lies the tension, because the kind of haute cuisine Michelin has historically rewarded has never been the natural register of this country’s hospitality. We have brilliance in abundance, but it rarely arrives in the guise of a great European dining institution for the benefit of anonymous inspectors.
And that is where the questions begin, because Michelin’s greatest power still rests on its most useful obscurity: we do not know, with any meaningful clarity, how many restaurants were reviewed, how many times they were visited, who visited them, how widely the inspectors travelled, or how much local understanding sat behind the final judgement. Recognition is not a complete account of New Zealand dining, and nobody should mistake it for one.
When I started Denizen in 2008, one of my central ambitions was to create a platform that treated restaurants with respect, intelligence, generosity and context. Because at the time, food writing seemed to mistake cruelty for authority. I had no interest in playing executioner, particularly when the people on the receiving end had often mortgaged houses, borrowed from family, signed leases and stepped into the public arena with the optimism of fulfilling a lifelong dream. My first-hand experience in the game started in the ’90s, when I worked in hospitality while attending university. I fell so hard for the industry, learning that a restaurant is more than a kitchen; it’s an orchestra of people working together to create an experiential harmony for everyone who walks in the door. It’s fast-paced, stressful, disciplined and run by people who are loyal beyond measure. It creates the sort of familial bond that becomes addictive because of the rewards you get from playing your part in the nightly performance. I have never lost the skills I learned over my career in hospitality. I’ve also never lost the friendships I made. Hospitality people are my kind of people: they have passion, soul, fire in their bellies, and an utter commitment to being the best. They live a balancing act between dedication to the job at all costs and unbridled enjoyment in their time off. Traits that are rare in most industries, and ones that have likely shaped my own view on business.
Looking back, I think I may have one of the longest continuous careers in this country, writing about and supporting the hospitality industry, although I never approached my role by dishing out criticism. And that is a choice I made from the outset. Denizen has spent almost two decades documenting the openings, reinventions, triumphs and little miracles of New Zealand hospitality from inside the culture, accentuating the positive, and never touting the negative for the misplaced attention it might bring to the page.
Denizen has never written a restaurant critique or review. Instead, we announce a new opening, explain who is behind it, the team’s provenance, the architecture of the room, the ambition of the menu, and the mood of the service. But the most important distinction comes next: we let the public decide. Table by table, night by night, the public eventually tells any eatery the truth, because the people a restaurant is intended for are the ones who deserve to be heard. Any good restaurateur knows this and pivots accordingly if necessary.
I continue to be annoyed by the high-horse culture of restaurant reviewing that many read and treat as gospel, particularly because the person writing the scathing review has no skin in the game. For them, this is hunting. These are not people who regularly dine out on their own dime; this is a paying gig, funded by a large media outlet, their provocation and mean comments rewarded by clicks, and their authority inflated by the thrill of public cruelty. The restaurant in question, meanwhile, will likely be carrying a mortgage, a family loan, a long-term lease and years of hard work to build the courage to open, only to see all of it negated by an uneducated hack wielding a poisonous pen.
I know this first-hand, having employed a certain food influencer many years ago who, as it turned out, was incapable of understanding the nuances of food beyond the gas station pie or the yellowed baked goods from a questionable food court. Eat Shit Food may have been a more applicable pseudonym.
Michelin’s anonymous inspectors are likely in the same category, though dressed in better mythology. They may not write savage prose, and they may not intend harm, but their omissions create public hierarchy, commercial advantage, quiet humiliation and consequence without any accountability. Whoever they are, they have travel routes, budgets and schedules, and they eat their way through a dining culture in a country they have likely never visited before.
We are not France, Tokyo, Copenhagen or New York, and to pretend that our hospitality culture should be understood through the same lens that rewards classical destination dining is to misunderstand the very thing that makes eating here meaningful. We are a small country at the bottom of the world, shaped by produce, immigration, informality and a national allergy to looking too impressed with ourselves, which results in our best restaurants expressing confidence through ease and enjoyment rather than pomp and ceremony.
The most useful criticisms of Michelin have long centred on this point. A.A. Gill argued that the guide encouraged chefs to cook for inspectors rather than customers, and that starred restaurants had begun to “look and taste the same”; Jonathan Gold famously suggested Michelin seemed ignorant of the way the people of Los Angeles ate, as though inspectors had been too timid to travel far from their hotel; and Pascal Rémy, the former Michelin inspector whose account challenged the omniscient inspection machine, claimed the inspector network was far smaller than the public imagined. Michelin has disputed aspects of this criticism, as grand institutions tend to do, but the claims remain difficult to shrug off. Secrecy, hierarchy, and inherited ideas of prestige will always struggle to see the variables in every dining culture, particularly ours.
The irony is that on the same Tuesday night the awards took place, Blue Breeze Inn on Ponsonby Road, owned and operated by one of our great hospitality figures, Mark Wallbank, was full. Viaduct Harbour stalwart Soul Bar & Bistro and eternal Italian favourites Amano and Prego were all similarly busy. These restaurants have already achieved the hardest thing in this business: they have become habitual, culturally embedded and commercially alive. Perhaps it was the sunny weather that got people out on a Tuesday in winter? But really, a full dining room on an ordinary night is no mystery. People love the connection and consistency of their favourite eateries, and that remains the ultimate prize for any operator.
So to those recognised, a huge congratulations, because the work behind that moment deserves respect, and no serious person should begrudge a restaurant the attention. And to those overlooked, hold your nerve, because a Michelin omission is not a verdict on your food, your team, your room, your contribution or your place in this country’s dining culture. The people who know, know just how good you are. And Denizen most certainly does too.
Michelin may have brought stars, but New Zealand hospitality has never been short of bright lights.
