Tucked away on the ground floor of Wynyard Quarter’s Park Hyatt hotel, Onemata shatters any preconceived ideas that hotel dining equals bland, uninspired fare. This place, under the watchful eye of executive chef Brent Martin, head chef Rob Hope-Ede and executive pastry chef Callum Liddicoat, is anything but boring. Rather it’s a sparkling celebration of local ingredients, brought to life by the grill and wok.

Onemata, meaning ‘dark, fertile soil’ in te reo Māori, delivers a menu that’s basically a love letter to small-scale local producers. Each dish is a tribute to New Zealand’s lush coastlines and bountiful landscapes, highlighted by a literal map on the menu that traces every ingredient back to its source. That menu is broken into six sections — starters, salads, sides, seafood, steam and wok, and then the main event: the hearth oven, listing both meat and fish options. Here you can take your pick from the scotch steak, eye fillet or lamb rump, then pick your sauce — jus, black peppercorn, salsa verde, béarnaise or house-made steak sauce. Or go for the fish, marvellously prepared either hearth roasted or pan fried. And definitely opt for one of the sides too — and by this we mean the eggplant. Kids are well catered to here, with a menu featuring what are essentially Lilliputian versions of the grown-up dishes.

Inside, the room is a mingling of luxury and warmth, with wooden floors, leather booths, surfaces of gold and marble, vast views of the Viaduct (meaning excellent people-watching) and seating softly illuminated by lamps that, to us at least, look a lot like tiny street lights. As one of our judges described it, “fancy but in a good way”.