New Zealand Dining Destinations

Author : Woodruff McCracken | Published On : 16 Nov 2025

1. Food at Wharepuke
Fine dining in Northland
This unique Cafe & Restaurant is set amongst a lush sub-tropical garden, and serves European and Thai inspired food. It can be a family owned and operated business which is simple to implement their adoration for nice tasting food. This all includes a side order of fantastic service at the same time.
2. Gina's Pizza and Pasta Bar
Funky Italian Restaurant in Auckland
CIAO and here you are at Gina's Pizza & Pasta Bar often known as 'Gina's'. They serve mouth-watering Italian food, which is not tied to pizza and pasta. Their service is genuinely Italian with exuberance and style.
This is a very cool restaurant but not one to go to should you be wanting solace. https://www.paulthepossumcatcher.com.au/ is very joyful and lively and you will probably fight to find elsewhere in Auckland that can compare with it.
3. Miles Better Pies
Cafe / Pie Shop in Fiordland
Come to Miles Better Pies and you can select from 16 kinds of gourmet pies, including venison!
But wait, there's more! You can also get pasties, sandwiches and home-made cakes and squares, not to mention the top coffee in the city.
So in case you are ever is that this amazing portion of New Zealand toddler overlook having certainly one of Miles Better Pies. It is simply the best!
4. 3C Bar & Restaurant
Restaurant in Wellington
At the turn of the twentieth century the Colonial Carrying Company sailed to any or all parts from the globe to obtain the exotic, the necessary and also the familiar for developing nation.
Today, 3C bar and restaurant proudly continues because same merchant adventuring tradition, using our hard-won knowledge and worldly connections to source the most effective in food, beer and wine through the four corners from the world, and believe us when we say they create a mean burger.
Situated down the middle of Wellington's exciting new Chews Lane entertainment precinct, 3C eagerly awaits your custom.
5. Beyond the Bridge Cafe
Cool little cafe in Manawatu
This is indeed a peaceful location for a cuppa and a bite you can eat, as well as of most they've got an outdoors pizza oven. Way cool.
So should you be in Manawatu and you really are searching for a whole lot of needed bag, you may not find anywhere superior to Beyond the Bridge Cafe.
6. Take Five Restaurant & Jazz Bar
Restaurant in Hawkes Bay
Take Five restaurant dining is intimate with all the emphasis being on giving the client time to enjoy the food and wine experience say Proprietors Peter Greene and Lesley Kingston.
Along using this type of, the restaurant offers up live jazz every Friday and Saturday evening.
Really cool spot to come for your complete dining experience.
7. The Mussel Pot
Quirky Restaurant in Marlborough
The Mussel Pot is a quaint little restaurant / cafe located within Havelock, Marlborough. Havelock is called the "Greenshell Mussel Capital" as over 85% of New Zealand's famous greenshell mussels are grown and harvested at their back door inside the pristine waters in the Marlborough Sounds.
As imaginable our menu strongly features these mussels, but through an Italian Owner and Head Chef we also have plenty of selection for the non-mussel lover.
But in the event you wonder, yes, you're guaranteed delicious Marlborough mussels harvested in local waters, fresh and live to The Mussel Pot all year long around.
8. Logan Brown Restaurant and Bar
Fine dining in Wellington
Everything you would expect from your leading fine dining restaurant except the pretension. Owners Logan and Brown believe having high standards does not imply their restaurant needs to be formal.
The food concept is approximately honesty and simplicity using a balance of taste and textures without muddling the flavours. Plate presentation is very important, nevertheless the real focus is on cooking correctly and creating dishes that eat correctly.
The style of service is warm and friendly having an focus on accuracy and product knowledge with an realizing that service has to be tailored to individual diners' needs.
9. Mrs Clark's Cafe
Brilliant little cafe in Southland
True caf?� style food, coffee and service. Their meals is fresh and straightforward but tasty and hand made.
The ambience the following is so relaxing and some people never desire to leave! They have sourced most of their food locally in fact it is all freshly made too. The eggs are fantastic and come from delighted chickens later on which can be fed organically and are free range. There are many vege and gluten free items about the menu too.
Nothing this is fancy, the meals isn't over garnished and there is no pretense as to the the hosts do. The menu is kept affordable, as well as the date scones have cult following. Utmost pride can be taken inside coffees.
Overall they do their finest to treat everyone a similar, taking the time to chat to customers if able and making every effort for customers to feel as if they have got get home.
Every day employees are told simply how much they love Mrs Clark's Caf?� as well as for them which is the true reward for working so very hard!
10. The Naked Possum
Unique cafe in Nelson + Tasman
The Naked Possum is surely an "eco tourism" gem situated with the edge in the Kahurangi forest in Golden Bay, New Zealand. Nestled in idyllic bush surrounds with the base from the Whakamarama mountain range it overlooks the Kaituna River along with the entrance towards the beautiful Kaituna Walking Track.
Their mission is to offer the eradication of the brush tail possum (a destructive pest in NZ) to guarantee that the diminishing native forests are protected and preserved. They are particularly enthusiastic about the restoration with the once magnificent rata forest in Golden Bay so actively encourage ongoing bug control, as well as the followup planting of rata trees, in this field.
The Naked Possum is really a must do "destination" experience incorporating an eco tannery, a retail possum shop, a rata nursery along with a fully licensed, award winning caf?�... filled with large outdoor fire, spit roast and barbeque.
11. Waitete Restaurant, Cafe & Ice Creamery
Excellent restaurant in the Coromandel
This restaurant exists to provide ambiance, excellent service and great tasting food for their guests. They are open 1 week per week for lunch and dinner and also get their own soft ice cream factory on the premises. This produces delicious soft ice cream, gelato and sorbets. They have room to entertain up to 75 people inside and about 50 within the summer period.
The Personal Philosophy of chef Roland Straessle is: "Totally customer oriented fresh foods excellent service as well as an ambience based on the German word GEMUETLICHKEIT which encompasses everything in the first smile when the guests arrive on the ambience, service and the food for the time as soon as the meal when the customer just lingers and enjoys his time with family or friends in your surrounding, until he decides if it is time for it to leave."
12. The Works Cafe Restaurant
Restaurant in Eastland
The Works Caf?� Restaurant is located in the "Old Brick Building through the Port", the very last remaining reminder from the Gisborne Freezing Works at the Port of Gisborne. The building housing The Works Caf?� Restaurant was the "Sausage Factory" part of the Freezing Works and reminders of the have emerged in the Restaurant.
During summer time you'll be able to sit beneath the grapevine canopy and sample the ambience with this location and restaurant while you're watching the boats slide gently in to the inner harbour. And inside the winter, you can sit inside while using fire warming the surface even though the good wines and food maintain your inside comfortable and warm.