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Auckland\u2019s Tala is the world\u2019s first Michelin-starred Samoan restaurant. Chef Henry Onesemo talks to Kim Knight about what it means to serve his culture, in every sense of the phrase.<\/p>\n
The glaze on the glass was the giveaway.<\/p>\n
\n The wine, stored in a regular refrigerator because Tala was not making
\n enough money to buy a dedicated drinks chiller, was too cold.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you pour, you see the glaze, and you know,\u201d says restaurant owner and chef Henry Onesemo. \u201cSo you start talking and talking …\u201d<\/p>\n
Long enough, he hopes, for the temperature in that glass to rise just a little.<\/p>\n
Pull up a spreadsheet from this time last year. On a mid-August Friday, four people had booked dinner. On a recent equivalent Friday, Tala is expecting 52 with a double-figure waitlist. Diners will pay $215 a head for the 14-course chef\u2019s journey. The drinks, now optimally chilled and served in delicately etched glasses, will be extra.<\/p>\n
Tala was a \u201cslow burn\u201d, says Onesemo. And now it is on fire.<\/p>\n
Michelin came to New Zealand in June. Queenstown\u2019s Essence attained two stars and 14 other restaurants, including Tala in Parnell, Auckland, were awarded one star.<\/p>\n
Onesemo, wearing a red pandanus seed ula fala over a new Michelin chef\u2019s jacket and holding the Samoan flag, broke down on stage. The restaurant he and his wife Debby had opened in 2023 had just made global culinary history.<\/p>\n
Tala had already been recognised in New Zealand \u2013 it was the Supreme Winner in 2025\u2019s Viva Top 50 Restaurant Awards and held three hats from Cuisine\u2019s Good Food Guide \u2013 but it was now the first contemporary Samoan restaurant in the world with a Michelin star.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they call my name, I have roughly two minutes of confidence,\u201d Onesemo recalls.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe closer I got to the stage, it started to unravel a little bit. Now they\u2019re putting the jacket on. All the confidence is gone now, I\u2019m just in vulnerability mode. When they said, \u2018The first Samoan restaurant …\u2019, what are you going to do?<\/p>\n
\u201cYou try to be strong for the culture, so that you can deliver an eloquent thank you. And the speech that I\u2019ve said perfectly 1000 times while taking a shower just wasn\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of six \u201cpresenting chefs\u201d chosen to cook for the event, Onesemo had told his team it was likely a consolation prize: \u201cWe\u2019re probably not going to get anything tonight, so enjoy it, don\u2019t look sad when people are coming around, congratulate them …\u201d<\/p>\n
After the ceremony, \u201cI was trying to call Debs. We couldn\u2019t find each other. I was just losing it. I almost went home, I didn\u2019t want to go back in there. It was just overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henry and (far right) Debby Onesemo at Tala’s weekly manager’s meeting. Photo \/ Michael Craig
\nWhen Tala opened, the plates came from Kmart and there was no dedicated wine chiller. Now it has a Michelin star \u2013 and bespoke glassware. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
The Tala story in two paragraphs: Onesemo, born in American Samoa and raised in Samoa, is from the village of Malaemalu in Falealili. His father was a grocery store accountant, his mother is a lecturer at the National University of Samoa. He failed high school and moved to Hawaii, chasing a career in the military and picking up extra work at a resort, before a dance audition took him to a job at Disney World in Florida.<\/p>\n
He meets Debby, a lawyer. They move to Samoa with plans to open an Italian restaurant. A visit to New Zealand includes a meal at Michael Meredith\u2019s eponymous restaurant on Dominion Rd. Inspired, Onesemo requests an unpaid \u201cstage\u201d at Meredith\u2019s and is ultimately offered a full-time job. More kitchens and more international travel follow, but all the while, he has plans for his own place: a fine-dining restaurant serving Samoan food.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people that came before me have laid down the groundwork,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019ve been through the dawn raids, they\u2019ve been discriminated against at the train station … People that have come before me have had to go through the struggle, so that it\u2019s easy for me to just walk in and be like, \u2018Oh, I want to open a Samoan restaurant in one of the expensive suburbs of New Zealand.\u2019 Nobody batted an eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so I find myself in a very privileged position to be able to dare to do something like this, and just go ahead and just do it. It might not be what they fought for, but the opportunity is available to me because of that struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n
How do you make a Michelin-starred Samoan dinner? Begin by never forgetting where you come from.<\/p>\n
Tala chef and co-owner Henry Onesemo takes customers through his version of panikeke, the Samoan pancake found everywhere from school lunchboxes to church kitchens. Photo \/ Michael Craig
Rolling out the panikeke, freshly made for every diner. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
The Herald spent two days at Tala. We wanted to observe the restaurant in prep mode, sit in on the weekly manager\u2019s meeting and consider the rhythm of a fine-dining kitchen against the traditional origins of its food.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure,\u201d said Onesemo, who two weeks ago was named Chef of the Year at the 2026 Cuisine Good Food Awards. And then he served us the essence of his life so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo aumaga, in Samoa, are men that do not have chief titles, and they usually are the ones in the kitchen. I\u2019m an aumaga. I don\u2019t have a chief title. I don\u2019t have any tattoos yet. I\u2019ll forever be in the kitchen, forever be in service … I like being where I\u2019m at. My responsibility is different. I still feel like I\u2019m serving Samoa, doing what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tala\u2019s multi-course degustation menu draws on the tradition of the to\u02bbona\u02bbi, the communal Sunday feast that follows church.<\/p>\n
To\u02bbona\u02bbi is about service, says Onesemo, describing a kind of \u201cbest of\u201d meal to which multiple families contribute. Unlike a restaurant, there is no printed menu.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do what is called folafola meaai … calling out all of the menu items that the community has brought in for the to\u02bbona\u02bbi.\u201d<\/p>\n
The language is highly respectful and the formal structure includes an apology and opening address, the acknowledgement of high-ranking guests, the proclamation of the food and, finally, a blessing and a call to eat. Onesemo remembers the first time he performed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was around 16. It\u2019s very nerve-wracking.\u201d<\/p>\n
He imagines diners being able to experience this at Tala. And then, less seriously, \u201cI don\u2019t know how it would be for me to be shirtless in the middle of the restaurant …\u201d<\/p>\n
Prep day at Tala – Henry Onesemo and sous chef Sol. Photo \/ Michael Craig
\nSenior chef de partie Melanie, dehydrating spinach leaves to accompany the panikeke course. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
On a Wednesday, the dining room smells like smoke and chocolate. It\u2019s prep day. The kitchen is cleaning scallops, picking the individual pulp sacs from pomelo and dehydrating spinach leaves.<\/p>\n
Getting a new dish on the menu takes up to three months. Today, Onesemo is working on fa\u2019ausi, a coconut and taro dessert that he makes with nashi pear.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Samoa, you would get a hot rock, pour sugar on top of the rock and melt it into the coconut milk …\u201d<\/p>\n
The chef must convince himself customers are ready for dessert taro. He dices a Fijian pink. Next week, he\u2019ll try a Tongan white, and then a Samoan pink. The best taro, he says, is from Niue. (I\u2019m a palagi journalist on the other side of the counter wondering why I\u2019ve never considered that \u2013 of course \u2013 there would be multiple varieties of this fundamental Pacific root vegetable. Later, I\u2019ll sample the taro soaked in dark caramel laced with lime leaves. The texture is fudgy, the flavour both sweet and slightly bitter. Delicious. \u201cI want to see how it is in the morning,\u201d says Onesemo. \u201cBut, yeah, I think we could do this.\u201d).<\/p>\n
The food at Tala is frequently described as a fine-dining take on the chef\u2019s childhood favourites. That\u2019s only partly true.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people come in, they get a full spectrum … some will be based on an ingredient, another dish will be focused on a cooking technique, or on Samoan tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farmed whitebait stands in for palolo – the floating reproductive “tail” of a sea worm, collected on rare annual spawning nights in Samoa. Photo \/ Michael Craig
\nTala’s opening course stars raw fruit and an ice-breaking backstory. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
Consider the snack course, a multi-bite homage to Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson, who spent his final years in Samoa and was an important figure in the Mau movement that gained the nation its independence. When Tusitala (the \u201cstoryteller\u201d) died, he was buried at the top of Mt Vaea overlooking Apia. Onesemo shares this history as customers eat taro with curry, pomelo and a \u201cfloating island\u201d meringue.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know why I tell you where he was buried,\u201d says Onesemo conversationally. \u201cTo prove we didn\u2019t eat all the white people.\u201d<\/p>\n
He laughs and so does the customer. The chef does not want you to sit in reverent silence. The first thing you\u2019ll eat here is raw fruit and a reference to impatient kids who pick it too early and dip it in Raro to make it sweeter. You may have to lick your fingers. Your napkin will definitely get dirty.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now all bets are off \u2013 we\u2019re in this together,\u201d says Onesemo.<\/p>\n
In Samoa, there is no to\u02bbona\u02bbi without an umu.<\/p>\n
The above-ground earth oven where food is cooked on superheated rocks and under a thick layer of leaves is a labour-intensive undertaking. Coconut husks and firewood must be gathered; banana and elephant ear leaves harvested. The fire that heats the rocks is lit before dawn; cooking must be underway before church starts.<\/p>\n
At the heart of the Tala kitchen is the fire, used to cook umu chicken and smoke fish frames. Photo \/ Michael Craig
\nA final flame from senior chef de partie Melanie before the “roadside barbecue” hits the pass. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually, you kind of slowly start prepping for it from Thursday,\u201d says Onesemo. \u201cThere\u2019s a harvest day at the plantation to get taro, bananas, maybe breadfruit. The Friday job would be collecting all the coconuts, talking to the neighbours to see what they have, especially if they are a fisherman \u2013 can you stop at us tomorrow?\u201d<\/p>\n
You might need to make an arrangement for a bread or ice delivery via the supakako (\u201cit\u2019s a guy, you\u2019ll always see him hanging out of the bus while it\u2019s going like 80 miles an hour\u201d). He is, literally, the supervisor of the cargo, taking coconuts to market, and bringing essentials back to the village.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re in town, you go to the market. If you\u2019re in the villages, the people who fish will drive around in their truck, going beeeep-beeeep-beeeep. You just got to chase it down, and hopefully they will have some good stuff left, and then there\u2019s usually a deal done right on the bed of the ute …\u201d<\/p>\n
As Onesemo talks, a sous chef fillets kingfish, ordered online and delivered in a styrofoam box. Behind them, the fire burns with black wattle and sometimes m\u0101nuka, pre-chopped and delivered by Country Woods.<\/p>\n
The heart of Tala is the umu chicken, prepared from scratch in front of the diner.<\/p>\n
Onesemo splits the raw bird down the breastbone and lines its inside with herbs. The fire was lit almost an hour earlier, and the rocks he sourced from a friend (\u201cit seems like a shady deal \u2013 we met on K Rd, in a parking lot, and she\u2019s giving me this crate of rocks …\u201d) are red hot. He places one in the cavity of the chicken. It spits and smokes, and he works quickly to wrap it in banana leaves, before placing it back on the fire and smothering it in burlap.<\/p>\n
Two metres along the bench, the senior chef de partie spreads a fermented carrot and tomato puree on an acetate sheet. She too must work quickly \u2013 that liquid is about to set to a crisp snap. Molecular gastronomy versus elemental flame. The chefs are working at opposite ends of the cooking spectrum, and neither has margin for error.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill to this day, I get so nervous that it\u2019s going to come out raw,\u201d Onesemo says. \u201cYou\u2019d have to figure out a quick solution; the guest is not going to stay around for you to light up another fire. That takes an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twice a night, he unwraps a chicken slick with steam, and holds his breath. Could he make life easier?<\/p>\n
\u201cOne hundred per cent. We could actually just cold smoke the chicken as part of the brining process and roast it in the oven. But I just can\u2019t get the flavour of the banana leaves to come through. Lack of talent is why we\u2019re not doing it over there,\u201d says Onesemo, gesturing to the oven. \u201cI just can\u2019t accomplish that flavour that we get from the umu anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Not that everything about this dish is traditional. \u201cFree-range here is not free-range in Samoa. The chickens there have muscle. I joke, but you need to cook it for a couple of days. That chicken\u2019s been up the mountain a couple of times!\u201d)<\/p>\n
Henry Onesemo, chef and co-owner of Auckland restaurant Tala, with the roadside barbecue course featuring (towards the rear of the platter) umu chicken finished with fai’ai ula and kumara crisps. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
Tala is a tutorial in people and place. Dinner, but not as the fine-dining world has seen it before. The moment this becomes abundantly clear has brought some diners to tears. At a certain point in the chef\u2019s journey, your hands will be washed. This is very different to washing your hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cGratitude is now a shared sentiment,\u201d says Onesemo. \u201cInstead of just us being grateful that they are here and having us be of service to them, you can sense the gratitude from the guest \u2013 the respect that they have for the culture is now shared. I like that a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016. She is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk and has a master\u2019s in gastronomy from AUT.<\/p>\n
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