Amisfield Restaurant, Queenstown, New Zealand

January 14, 2024

Neither of us are foodies, so we had no prior experience of dining at a truly high end restaurant. The type of restaurant where it takes five hours to eat nineteen courses (no exaggeration). Amisfield was named New Zealand’s top restaurant in 2023, and based on our experience it is easy to see why. Along with Mike (our nephew), Ben (our son) and Taylor (Ben’s girlfriend), we were seated in a semi-private room above the main dining area. 

If you are a vegetarian, this is not the restaurant for you.  During the evening, we sampled fish, shellfish, eel, lamb, duck, venison and elk. Most of the food was locally sourced and the presentation was often spectacular. The servings were all small but quickly added up as the night progressed. Often the food was disguised to look like something else. For example, this looks like a tropical plant but the flowers were actually a type of tomato salad on a cracker.

And the stones beside this bread are actually butter.

Sometimes, the dishes looked more offputting than they actually were. This may look like a bloody deer horn, but it is actually sculpted ice cream in a beet sauce. The ice cream was made from deer milk which apparently has a higher fat content than cow’s milk but is a lot more dangerous to obtain (deer have a tendency to kick).

A couple of times during the evening we were ushered outside. Once to sit by the barbecue where the meat was being grilled.

And once to a little glass house, where the sounds of the forest were being piped in. We ate a sorbet that was hidden among a little mossy tabletop garden. The sorbet was made from the leaves of a kawakawa tree. Kawakawa is a native tree that has long been used by maori for its numbing qualities. They would chew on it when they had toothaches. We did notice our lips getting a little numb.

As the clock passed eleven, we finally finished our last dish, which if our memory serves us correctly was ice cream made out of liver and fudge sculpted to look exactly like a huhu grub. It was certainly a night to remember.