The Cuisine NZ Good Food Awards celebrates the best restaurants throughout New Zealand. Restaurants are visited anonymously and judged based on food (flavour, technique, produce, balance), service, wine and wine service, and ambiance. This year’s Restaurant of the Year winner was Roots Restaurant based in Lyttelton, Christchurch. Roots also took out Innovation Award sponsored by Ora King Salmon.
Chef/owner of Roots Restaurant. Photo courtesy of Guy Frederick
Chef/Owner Giulio Sturla with partner Christy Martin established Roots together and are undoubtedly passionate about their ingredients, whether they are foraged or gathered from local, sustainable farms. The restaurant enables these ingredients, along with the current season, to determine their innovative degustation menu.
A dish of fig ice, textures of chocolate, caramel and burnt feijoas, from Roots, named 2015 Restaurant of the Year. Carys Monteith/Fairfax NZ
For a superb example of how ingredients are utilised at Root’s, here is a menu Giulio put together with The Musket Room chef Matt Lambert earlier this year for their ConversatioNZ Cook Up series.
Root’s was a deserving winner of this year’s Restaurant of the year and Ora King Innovation Award, they also took out two Cusine NZ Good Food Award ‘Hats’, which is a score of 16 out of 20 based on the above criteria. We often see restaurants we collaborate with adorn Cuisine Hats. Other winning restaurants serving and/or collaborating with Ora King can be seen below.
Kazuya 18/20 – Consistently Outstanding
Sidart 18.5/20 – Consistently Outstanding
Masu 17/20 – Excellent
Roots 17/20 – Excellent
Meredith’s 16/20 – Great
Cocoro 16/20 – Great
Logan Brown 16.5/20 – Great
Soul Bar & Bistro 15.5/20 – Very Good
Pacifica 15/20 – Very Good
Hopgoods 15/20 – Very Good
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