From standout newcomers to enduring favourites, Jesse Mulligan shares the Auckland restaurants that have delivered him the most memorable meals… so far.
The best thing about being a restaurant critic is also the worst thing: you visit a different restaurant every week. It means that you never spend long thinking
about somewhere you’ve already been, and you almost never visit the same place twice.
So when Viva asked me to choose my favourite meals of 2026, I was delighted. Reading back through these reviews I felt like I was enjoying these restaurants for the first time all over again. It’s been a great year for eating, and these are the places that excited me most.
Mother
We knew it was going to be good, because everything these guys do is good. But early rumours suggested this might be just a minor project; “a wine bar to help deal with the spillover from Lilian”, owner Hugo muttered to me when I asked him about it. But he was being modest: this is a full-service restaurant creating beautifully inventive flavours in a space that makes you feel happy to be there. Never mind the industrial-scale bakery that roars into action before the sunrise each day, judged purely as a restaurant this would be a strong contender for the best new opening in 2026. The only thing you need to worry about is how you’ll get a table.
Agnes restaurant in Birkenhead. Photo / Babiche Martens
Agnes
Beautifully inventive is all very well but sometimes you just want a hamburger. If you’re going to eat comfort food this is the place to find it – a flash but grounded bistro on Birkenhead’s Hinemoa St (as close as the North Shore gets to having its own Ponsonby Rd). The menu may appear simple but chef Alfie Ingham seems like the sort of guy who lies awake at night wondering how to make every mouthful taste just a little bit better. That level of care doesn’t always cost extra: Agnes is the home of Auckland’s cheapest and possibly tastiest steak.
The 48-hour cured salmon on the menu at Spiga. Photo / Babiche Martens
Spiga
This may be the apotheosis of Italian food in Auckland (don’t worry if you had to Google “apotheosis”, I did too). It has all the best elements of Italy – fine ingredients, seasonality, complex carbohydrates – but with a Michelin-standard level of ambition. As at the best fine-dining restaurants, you can point to any single thing on your plate and receive an 800-word description of what it is and how it got there. Yet the only starchiness is in the pasta. This is a place to have fun, and drink good wine, and if you happen to notice the salmon has been cured 48 hours in a rare Piedmontese cherry liqueur, lucky you.
Shop 1/E/415 Remuera Rd, Remuera. spiga.nz
Return restaurant in Ponsonby. Photo / Babiche Martens
Return
Just when it seemed like every restaurant in Auckland was becoming more casual, Matt Lambert launched a flagship restaurant which was unapologetically fancy. Snacks cost $20 a mouthful but you may end up eating the most wonderful thing you’ve stuck a fork through all year. Matt’s Musket Room in New York was one of the city’s hottest tables, and you have to love him for treating Ponsonby Rd with the same respect, compromising almost none of the ambition. From the moment it opened, this was the place to choose if somebody else was paying.
Den Ramen in Cross St. Photo / Babiche Martens
Den Ramen
I love the entire premise of this place, which is that a restaurant space can be whatever you want it to be. There isn’t room to swing a cat inside Den Ramen though you could just about manage it at one of their outside tables (and in this part of town nobody would look at you twice). The drinks menu is short, the food menu is short, and yet with the lack of decision making comes a peacefulness that you don’t encounter when ordering in bigger restaurants. Take a seat at the bar and you’ll feel even more reassured, watching a busy team create perfect Japanese-inspired small dishes from scratch. Then of course there is the ramen which the restaurant is named for – perfected over years in a food truck and now available with cocktails on one of the city’s coolest streets, if you’re willing to wait for a seat.
The awadhi mutton curry at Oh Calcutta, Parnell. Photo / Babiche Martens
Oh Calcutta
Not every restaurant needs to be new, or cool, or cutting edge. They’ve been doing much the same thing at Oh Calcutta since the early 1990s, and that’s the beauty of it. Sometimes you just want a very spicy curry in a very comfortable room with a perfectly-mixed gin and tonic, and the proprietors of this restaurant know how to provide it. You will feel at home as soon as you open the door here, and unlike other restaurants whose crowds might fade a little once the hot new place opens down the street, Oh Calcutta has achieved something almost no other Auckland restaurant has managed: over three decades of full, happy dining rooms, with no sign of slowing down any time soon.
According to Dining Out editor Jesse Mulligan.