Wellington's Hiakai Has Been Named One of TIME's Greatest Places for 2019
The annual list rounds up 100 of the best destinations, restaurants and attractions to visit around the world.
Not even one year since opening its brick-and-mortar location in Mount Cook and Monique Fiso's Hiakai has been named one of TIME's Greatest Places for 2019.
The annual list from the influential publication rounds up 100 of the best destinations, restaurants and attractions to visit around the world. In addition to quality, originality, sustainability, innovation and influence, each listing is chosen with the sense that one has stumbled upon the extraordinary.
Hiakai is in good company, sitting alongside Norway's under the sea restaurant, New South Wales' twice-a-month restaurant BARN by Biota, the new digital-only art museum in Tokyo, and Iceland's geothermal sea baths.
Meaning 'hungry' or to 'have a craving for food' in te reo Māori, Hiakai is a world-class restaurant devoted to the exploration and development of Māori cooking techniques and ingredients. The sophisticated menus created by chef/owner Monique Fiso set out to challenge the status quo of Māori food in New Zealand, while playing a leading role in keeping our indigenous food culture alive. She uses flavours foraged from the land and sea with a special focus on Māori and Polynesian ingredients — the kitchen whip up delights like pipis roasted under a bed of flaming pine needles, Kaipara oysters with horopito mignonette granita and koromiko flowers, and kawakawa sorbet.
The capital's Zealandia also made the Greatest Places list, in line with the 500-acre urban eco-sanctuary celebrating the birth of its 1000th hihi chick earlier this year.
See TIME's 100 Greatest Places for 2019 here.
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