Auckland's best restaurants this minute

I'm often asked which Auckland restaurant is best. The answer changes all the time and is only definitively decided once a year in the Metro awards. But I can give you a pretty good list on any day of the week.

A week of good eats

On Friday night I did the full degustation menu at The Grove, for around the price of a Big Day Out ticket. Whether or not that strikes you as good value or not depends probably on your feelings about live music and/or fine dining, but I offer the comparison to make the point that when it comes to budgets, sometimes you should treat restaurant visits as if they were special event, rather than just a meal. People save up and look forward to rock concerts all the time, but there's a tendency to compare a meal eaten out to the price you'd pay to eat in. You wouldn't compare a Metallica concert to the price of one of their CDs; likewise I'd suggest there's no need to begrudge paying over $100 for a meal when it constitutes a whole evening's entertainment.