The Complete Guide to Michelin Star Restaurants New Zealand
New Zealand has never had a Michelin Guide before. That changed on 30 June 2026, when the Michelin Guide held its first-ever ceremony in Oceania, right here in Auckland. For years, food lovers rated New Zealand’s restaurants highly without any official recognition to back it up. Now, that has changed too.
For travelers who plan trips around where they eat, this is the moment New Zealand joined a conversation usually reserved for Paris, Tokyo, and New York.
Quick summary: New Zealand’s inaugural MICHELIN Guide, released in June 2026, awarded stars to 15 restaurants across Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Queenstown. One restaurant, Essence in Queenstown, received Two MICHELIN Stars, the only two-star rating in the debut list. The remaining 14 restaurants each received One MICHELIN Star. A further 35 restaurants were named Bib Gourmand, and 60 more appear in the wider Michelin Selected list, bringing the total selection to 110 restaurants nationwide.
So if you’re planning a trip built around food, this guide is for you. Below, you’ll find every one of the Michelin star restaurants New Zealand chefs and inspectors have put on the map so far, where to find them, and how to actually get a seat.
Full List of Michelin Star Restaurants New Zealand
Instead of making you scroll through paragraphs to find names, here’s the complete list in one place.
| Restaurant | Location | Award Tier | Culinary Style / Highlight |
| Essence | Queenstown | 2 MICHELIN Stars ⭐⭐ | Innovative local ingredients overlooking Lake Wakatipu |
| Amisfield | Queenstown | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Hyper-seasonal Central Otago terroir pairings |
| Tala | Auckland | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Immersive, contemporary Samoan wood-fired cuisine |
| Ahi | Auckland | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Native Māori wood-fired farm-to-table dining |
| Tantalus Estate | Waiheke Island | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Refined French techniques fused with NZ produce |
| Ortega Fish Shack | Wellington | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Elite, globally influenced fresh local kaimoana (seafood) |
| Inati | Christchurch | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Reimagined European classics with bold South Island produce |
| Jano Bistro | Wellington | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Seasonal, artfully plated French-Kiwi fusion in a historic cottage |
| Kika | Wānaka | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Modern tapas and seasonal sharing plates in Central Otago |
| Logan Brown | Wellington | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Contemporary New Zealand fine dining in a historic former bank |
| Mudbrick | Waiheke Island | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Mediterranean-inspired dining with panoramic Hauraki Gulf views |
| Paris Butter | Auckland | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Avant-garde French bistro fare with innovative Kiwi accents |
| Rātā | Queenstown | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Modern New Zealand cuisine celebrating southern heritage and wild ingredients |
| Sherwood | Queenstown | 1 MICHELIN Star ⭐ | Sustainable, organic kitchen-garden-led dining with natural wines |
Fifteen stars across four cities is a genuinely strong showing for a country’s first year in the Guide. In fact, Michelin’s own inspectors called it rare to award this many stars in a debut selection. As a result, New Zealand now sits alongside destinations that took decades to build their Michelin reputation.
New Zealand’s Michelin Restaurants by Region
The 2026 Guide only covers four regions for now. Even so, each one has its own personality at the table.
Michelin Guide Queenstown: Home to New Zealand’s Only Two-Star Restaurant
Queenstown holds the country’s only Two Star restaurant. That alone says something about how far the town’s food scene has come. Essence, led by chef Paul Froggatt, sits above Lake Wakatipu inside the ROKI Collection hotel. Here, the focus is on clarity of flavor rather than flashy technique.
Nearby, Amisfield pairs its own Central Otago wines with produce grown on the estate. Meanwhile, Sherwood leans into foraging, drawing much of its menu from an on-site garden. Kika and Rātā round out the town’s five starred restaurants. Together, they give Queenstown more Michelin recognition per capita than almost anywhere else on the list.
If your trip already includes the South Island’s ski fields or hiking trails, it’s worth adding an extra night here just for the food. A Milford Sound day trip from Queenstown pairs naturally with a Michelin dinner. Both reward travelers who slow down.
Michelin Restaurants Auckland: A City Built on Fusion
Auckland’s three starred restaurants tell a story about how varied New Zealand cooking has become. Tala made history as the first Samoan restaurant anywhere in the world to receive a Michelin star. It was a genuinely emotional moment for chef Henry Onesemo at the ceremony. Ahi. focuses on wood-fired cooking rooted in Māori culinary tradition. Its ingredients trace back to the restaurant’s own kitchen garden in South Auckland.
Add Paris Butter’s polished modern menu, and you get three very different rooms. Together, they capture how far Auckland’s dining scene has grown. Just a short ferry ride away, Waiheke Island contributes two more stars through Mudbrick and The Estate. Both sit among working vineyards.
For travelers exploring things to do in Auckland, pairing a city dinner with a Waiheke lunch makes for one of the best food days you can build in New Zealand.
Wellington Michelin Star Restaurants: Heritage and Fresh Seafood
Wellington’s three stars sit in Ortega, Logan Brown, and Jano Bistro. Each has a different character, but all three share a focus on seasonal, locally sourced cooking. Ortega leans into the capital’s excellent access to fresh kaimoana, or seafood. Logan Brown, on the other hand, occupies one of the city’s more storied dining rooms.
Together, these three restaurants make Wellington one of the strongest food cities on the list, and a natural stop on any North Island itinerary.
Christchurch: Vineyard Dining and Reimagined European Classics
Christchurch, still rebuilding its identity as a food city after years of recovery, earned two stars through Inati and Tussock Hill. Inati reimagines European classics using bold South Island produce. Tussock Hill, meanwhile, is a lunch-only vineyard experience built entirely around its own wine list.
Because of these two restaurants, Christchurch now anchors the South Island end of New Zealand’s growing Michelin food trail.
Building a Michelin Itinerary in New Zealand
Here’s the part most articles about the Michelin Guide leave out: getting a table is genuinely hard right now. Since the ceremony, reservation demand at all 15 restaurants has spiked. Part of that is global media coverage. Part of it is social media, where clips of chefs like Paul Froggatt discussing years of work behind Essence’s two stars have spread fast. Some restaurants are already booking weeks out. That pressure will only build heading into the busier travel months.
This is exactly the kind of logistical headache a well-planned trip should absorb for you. It shouldn’t be something you sort out at 11pm from a hotel room with patchy wifi. Booking a table at Essence, Tala, or Amisfield is one thing. Coordinating that reservation with your accommodation and the rest of your itinerary is another matter entirely.
Designing a Seamless Luxury Culinary Tour
This is where a custom-built trip earns its keep. A private itinerary can be built around the restaurants you actually want to visit. Premium chauffeured transfers connect vineyard lunches to city dinners. Accommodation, too, can be chosen to put you close to the table, not an hour away from it. So if a Michelin dinner in Queenstown means you also want a scenic flight over Milford Sound the next morning, plan that ahead. Don’t leave it to chance.
Explore how we build these experiences into our Luxury Private Tours New Zealand packages. Fine dining reservations, private transport, and boutique lodges are all woven into a single itinerary. We’ve also written more about what makes a private luxury tour of Aotearoa different from a standard coach package, in case you want to see how the pieces fit together.
For travelers who want food to be the centerpiece, our 7 Day New Zealand Premium Food & Wine Discovery tour already threads together some of the country’s best vineyards and restaurants. It can also be adapted to include a stop at one of the newly starred venues. You’ll find more regional options under our Food & Wine activities, covering everything from Central Otago wine tastings to Waiheke Island lunches.
The Geography of New Zealand’s Michelin Map
Once you plot these 15 restaurants on a map, one thing stands out: how spread out they are, and how closely that spread mirrors the country’s natural geography.
- Auckland and Waiheke Island (North Island): 5 stars, split between the city itself and a short ferry ride to vineyard country
- Wellington (North Island): 3 stars, clustered in the capital’s compact dining district
- Christchurch (South Island): 2 stars, including a vineyard restaurant just outside the city
- Queenstown (South Island): 5 stars, the highest concentration in the country, set against the Southern Alps and Lake Wakatipu
That geography matters for trip planning. A route running from Auckland down to Wellington, across to Christchurch, and on to Queenstown lines up naturally with a combined South Island and North Island itinerary. So you don’t have to choose between the country’s food scene and its landscapes, especially once the logistics are handled for you.
Why New Zealand’s New Michelin Stars Matter to Your Next Trip
Fifteen stars, spread across four regions. A two-star restaurant with a view most diners will never forget. Chefs sharing deeply personal stories on stage about what the recognition means to them. This isn’t just a marketing moment. It’s a food culture finally getting the spotlight it arguably deserved years ago.
So if you’re planning a trip that puts these restaurants on the itinerary, start early. Reservations will only get harder to secure. Whichever region you choose, these are the Michelin star restaurants New Zealand has spent decades building toward, and building your dining around the rest of your travel is what turns a good trip into a genuinely memorable one.
Browse our full range of New Zealand tour packages, or get in touch to start building an itinerary around the country’s newest culinary stars.
