WELCOME

Top Tastes is designed to help you find the best food and beverage venues and products; whether you want delicious fish chips, beautiful café food in a winery setting, finely crafted formal dining, food ideas, wine reviews or cocktail recipes this is your guide to the best New Zealand has to offer.

Top Tastes was created by Neil Hodgson and managed by him, he has invited other writers to contribute to the site, this means more regional information will be added as time goes by. You will find a range of opinions, reviews and recipes from people who know their stuff when it comes to food and beverage.

Only reviews written by this select group will be published on the site (you are welcome to leave comments of course) so you will be able to trust the review – no fake reviews, no ranting, just good information to help you choose great things to eat and drink as well as the best places to eat out.

THE LATEST REVIEWS

Cheap and Cheerful in Hamilton

We Hamiltonians are spoilt for choice for places to eat, from fine dining restaurants with award winning chefs, to more casual cafes where interesting meals are served to a discerning public.  And a wide range of ethnic establishments are scattered throughout the city.  There’s no excuse not to find somewhere to eat well.  I can […]

Coffee 101 Bridge Street Nelson

Wellington is famous for having more hospitality businesses per head of population than New York City and many of those businesses have coffee as their main reason for being. When we look at how many hospitality businesses are failing in Christchurch where it seems that for every new venue that opens another closes, Ii’s a […]

Cheap and Cheerful in Hamilton

We Hamiltonians are spoilt for choice for places to eat, from…

Coffee 101 Bridge Street Nelson

Wellington is famous for having more hospitality businesses per…

FEATURED ARTICLES

The Apple Shed Kitchen & Bar

The Apple Shed Kitchen & Bar on the Mapua wharf has been…

Anchorage Wines- Stripping back helps Motueka Winemakers and Growers strike gold

Following on from my previous column about how Motueka Winemakers…

Heke Homemade Herbals

It’s been several years since I caught up with Emme Heke from…

Lip-smacking food from down under the hood

The Under The Hood BBQ business is a fantastic success story…

Great Scutt: New label wine for the ages

Scutt Wines is a tiny producer you may not have heard of before…

North Eatery

One of our favourite places to sit in the sun, enjoy a glass…

TOP WINES TASTINGS

We’ve put together a team of experts who have a passion for writing about food and beverages.