New Zealand’s food story is worth travelling for. People often ask me what New Zealand food actually is, and I never have a tidy answer. France has a cuisine. So does Italy, so does Japan. Say the name and a whole tradition arrives with it, based on centuries of tradition and culture, and instantly recognisable. New Zealand hasn’t really had that, and for a long time I thought of it as a gap.

When the Michelin Guide handed out its first New Zealand awards this year, that old question came back to me; what is typical Kiwi cuisine?

The numbers were genuinely something; we have fourteen restaurants with a star, while Essence in Queenstown has two. There are more than a hundred names in the inaugural guide altogether, a proper recognition for an industry that has been building its case for decades. But it wasn’t the count that got me

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