When we asked our friends with good taste to tell us the single best thing they ate this year, we knew we were asking an overly simplistic question. 

“Don’t overthink it,” we cautioned - tell us about the culinary memory that jumps into your head first. 

Like personal taste, the answers varied widely. But for many of us, 2023 seems to have been a year of carb supremacy - from the pleasures of a perfectly fried spud served up at a swanky venue in Sydney, to a fabulously frilly cake shared amongst friends and family while celebrating a watershed moment. 

Below what a smorgasbord of our friends remember as the best thing they ate and drank in 2023, both here at home and further afield.  

Delaney Mes, food writer

The cheese toastie and tepid Milo that my midwife handed me in the delivery suite an hour or two after giving birth comes close to the best thing I ate this year, but it was pipped by the kapa butter udon noodles we ate in Takamatsu, Japan, in April.

My partner researched relentlessly and so we found ourselves in a heaving steamy restaurant in a small town famous for udon. The noodles are served hot and fresh out of the starchy water (rather than the usual cool down after cooking then heat to order method) and they were doused in cracked black pepper and a knob of butter (and a raw egg for carbonara vibes if you’re up for it/not pregnant like I was). 

It was like the best cacio e pepe you’ve ever eaten. The perfect chew, with heat from the pepper, and the starchy water mixed with the butter made for a formidable sauce. I looked up and announced: I never have to eat another noodle again. It was perfection.

Lara Daly, Ensemble publishing co-ordinator

I was recently in Mexico, and I ate so many things that blew my tiny mind (and some that blew up my stomach lol) but I’ll share my top three, which you could probably recreate at home. The first two are drinks. Everyone knows about Micheladas, which is basically a beer like Corona made into a Bloody Mary: you add lime, tajin chilli powder, a splash of tomato juice (or clamato if you’re feeling brave) and rim the glass with salt and more tajin. But the best rendition of a Michelada I had was from a little caravan in Bacalar. They made them with fresh tamarind pulp instead of tomato juice – my boyfriend and I both drank two in a row and were in heaven.  

The next drink is something I would normally be repulsed by - lime flavoured milk. I’ll never forget how delicious and refreshing it was to guzzle that glass of iced Limon Sevillano. I looked up the recipe;  you blend whole limes with water, sugar and milk. Then you strain it through a sieve and serve over ice. In Brazil they make a similar agua fresca but with condensed milk, which also sounds insanely good. 

The best thing I actually ate in Mexico was easily pozole. It’s a rich soup of slightly spicy chicken broth, lots of lime, hominy (like giant plump corn kernels) and topped with shredded chicken, radish, lettuce, onion, avo and coriander. If someone could please open a Pozoleria in Auckland and serve tamarind micheladas and limon sevillanos, I promise I’ll keep you in business.

Michal Garvey, Founder of Foodprint 

I was first alerted to these feijoas from Forest through Instagram but I'd missed out when the dish was on the dessert menu, so when I found out that there was a feijoa and coffee pop-up to farewell their Symonds Street location, I had to head along. The frying made it gooey inside, with a crispy outer layer that was rolled in feijoa sugar. It was nestled on top of Forest's own vanilla ice cream and covered in a sticky caramel sauce.  

The whole thing was exactly what I wanted from a fried feijoa with different textures, flavours and temperatures coming together to delight the taste buds. It was so damn good, we even went back for a second round, because who doesn't need two feijoas and ice cream for a hungover Sunday brunch. Plabita, please bring these back in 2024!

Jean Teng, Food writer

Overseas: No one likes it when the answer to this question is something you can't immediately access, but truly the first thing I thought of was this beautiful platter from Melbourne Laotian restaurant Jeow. 

To set the scene, the night before I had spewed about five times in my hotel bathroom from suspected food poisoning (or from just eating a shitton of stupidly rich food) while my travelling partner went to eat at Hope St Radio and partied the night away. We already had this reservation for lunch the day after and I was feeling rough af, truly so queasy, but had to go through with it. 

This revived me: grilled pork, super spicy jeows (sauces), sour papaya salad, sausage (my fave!), herbs upon herbs upon herbs, the crunch of cooling cucumber, and the most healing broth, filled with vege and piled with vibrant greens. There was so much flavour that it covered the memory of being sick and made me believe in life again.

Local: Other things that came to mind include the beef tartare with khakra from Ponsonby restaurant KOL, the butter egg floss fish from Malaysian Lima Bintang in Ōtãhuhu (the pleasures of a full deep fried fish knows no bounds; if you've never ordered a full fish from anywhere besides Bar Celeste or at a Thai restaurant, please do), the ppyeo haejangguk (pork back bone stew) from SongDo – and, above all, the crispy chicken wing stuffed with scampi at Eden Terrace fine-dining restaurant Lillius. Chicken! Scampi! My two favourite things, colliding, co-conspiring with each other to deliver something truly delicious. One of the most underrated restaurants in Auckland imo.

Zoe Walker Ahwa, Ensemble co-founder and editor

Choosing potatoes feels like a cop out, but the beef fat potatoes at Sydney’s Clam Bar were that good; I still have a photo of them on my phone. We visited the restaurant/grill while in Sydney for fashion week, just days after it had opened so it had a buzz – it felt sexy, like being in a real city (it was also my first trip to Sydney since the pandemic which probably helped). The rest of the meal was amazing, but this plate of carbs, alongside the glitzy restaurant fit out, great dark lighting and service, is what I remember: crunchy outside, soft inside, perfectly salted. Dream potatoes, and perfect comfort food in a year that felt like it needed a lot of comfort.

Another memorable and comforting dish from that same trip that I also still think about: melt in your mouth 'leeks cooked in a bag, with brown butter vinaigrette' from Bar Copains in Surry Hills.

Connor Nestor, Managing director of New Ground Coffee‍

We moved our coffee factory from Avondale to a big new site in Wairau about 3 months ago and it’s been an insane excuse to explore every little joint in a 3km radius. I’ve been going to this strip mall corner site called Pho Vina for the Beef and Wonton Noodle Soup about 4 times a week. 

It’s all about the broth. If you want to be in the wellness trend then this is the plug. More potent than your $22 functional smoothie and tastes 1000x better. Every sip is a joy, honestly it’s got fucked up flavor. Bones, star anise perhaps some cinnamon and made in the process only generation after generation could master. There’s very few outstanding pho joints in Auckland but this is a star. A lunch time hit for me and i am just getting to know the regulars so please don’t come in the nicest way. 

Amy Yip, Founder of Yip Studio

I think the best thing I ate was a meaI I had at Bou Bou's in Lisbon, Portugal. I had some really amazing food this year! The stand out dish was Sea bass, Oysters, cockles, yuzu, Vin Jaune. They described the dish as tasting like you're at the beach and it really did. All the textures and flavours were there, the foam, the shellfish, the oyster cream. I just remember thinking “this is a perfectly executed dish.” And I look in the kitchen and an almost all female kitchen! 

Rebecca Wadey, Ensemble co-founder

Food is my love language. I try to make a point to only eat delicious things, so choosing the most delicious thing causes all kinds of angst and second-guessing. 

We had friends stay with us from the States this year who are similarly food-obsessed and I had fun taking them on a culinary tour of my favourite NZ dishes. We enjoyed the pickled mussels from Lillian, prawn toast from Omni, tempura eggplant with cashew butter at Aigo, a LOT of ice cream from Duck Island and Baby G burgers.

Outside of that time I also obsessed over our smoothie collab with Little Bird and the perfect salad from Forest. If I had to really narrow it down though - the best thing I ate this year is possibly the pate on fry bread that was served at the opening of Gilt. Horrifically it doesn’t appear to be part of their regular menu, so perhaps we need to start making some noise to change that. 

Reilly Hodson, Writer and the founder of newsletter Clipboard

In my opinion, the best meals are defined by who you ate them with. By far, the best thing that happened to me this year was getting engaged to my long term partner, now fiancé. We threw a big party to celebrate at my parent’s place with all our loved ones, and my future mother-in-law put on a delicious spread of lamb on pita breads, with heaps of delicious salads and sauces. We had so much kai that even after we’d all filled our boots, we sent our friends home with a takeaway box each. We finished it off with a fantastic, frilly cake by From Sugar, pictured, and there were no leftovers from that.

Tyson Beckett, Ensemble journalist

One bleak July evening when there was a lot going on, my brother and his fiance had me over to their house for dinner and plied me with Corpse Revivers as a means of distraction. For the uninitiated a Corpse Reviver is a cocktail made with equal parts gin, Lillet, fresh lemon juice and cointreau mixed with a splash absinthe then poured over a maraschino cherry. 

They also fed me, and I'm sure it was delicious (everything they cook is) but after two of these bracingly sour drinks (and a Godfather as a nightcap) I can't remember much else of the menu. My corpse was indeed revived, at least briefly. Just what I needed at the end of a long day, and even longer year.