Jesse Mulligan

4 days ago | nzherald.co.nz | Jesse Mulligan

Jesse Mulligan recommends you head to Blue Restaurant immediately for the persimmon salad. I almost always leave thinking about the whole meal rather than individual dishes but I have to tell you that the persimmon salad at Blue is the best thing I’ve eaten all year. It’s stop-the-conversation wonderful, and I’ll tell you more about it shortly, though I’m not 100% sure it’ll still be on the menu by the time you get there. I was too scared to ask.

6 days ago | nzherald.co.nz | Jesse Mulligan

In this fortnightly series, Viva’s resident dining-out editor shares advice on where and what to eat. Do you have any restaurant-related questions or dining-out dilemmas? Jesse Mulligan is here to help. Email Jesse at [email protected] and tell him what you need. Where and what do you like to eat? How much do you want to spend? If you’re visiting, where are you staying while you’re in town? Who are you eating with? Does anybody have access issues?

1 week ago | nzherald.co.nz | Jesse Mulligan

Jesse Mulligan finds his Achilles heel in a glossy, two-day master stock. I don’t always trust local recommendations from people in the suburbs – food tastes better when you know you can walk home afterwards – but I had a good feeling about this one, which a lovely gentleman named Christopher alerted me to via email. “It’s Georgian and Turkish. It’s fantastic. You don’t need to review it. I just wanna get you there. It’s called Troy and you need to go.

2 weeks ago | nzherald.co.nz | Jesse Mulligan

Jesse Mulligan finds a Hawke’s Bay Latin American restaurant to write home about. Havelock North can feel like a quiet and conservative town (I drove through around election time and saw nothing but blue corflutes) but the dining scene has always been pretty excellent, so long as you don’t want a late table. I was visiting this time with a couple of hundred others for a sporting event and you could see how the swollen population was adding to the local economy.

3 weeks ago | nzherald.co.nz | Jesse Mulligan

There’s a first time for everything, including ordering snails in Auckland’s arts district, writes Jesse Mulligan. There are a few things wrong with this Lorne St restaurant, but there is enough right with it that I still think it’s worth a look. There will be a time, when you’ve just left the Art Gallery or have tickets for a 7.30pm show at the Civic, and you’ll think “where’s somewhere round here we can grab a no-fuss dinner?”.