Nine times out of ten, my favorite food memories from my travels are small, casual, local sorts of places. Chicharron on a sidewalk in Santo Domingo. A shop in Tokyo that only did eel and rice bowls. Goat stew from a market stall in Curaçao. I could go on. For fine dining to be included in those mental “best of” lists, it really has to be special.

As I walk out of Tala in Auckland’s Parnell neighborhood, I know that no matter how good everything else I ate in this city was – and it absolutely was; Auckland has a phenomenal food culture – nothing is going to come close to what I just ate. Nothing will remotely measure up to the food, to the story, to the experience of dining at this incredible restaurant.

Tala means story in Samoan, and that is exactly what you’re going to get in a visit here. Each dish – I participate in the Chef’s Journey set menu at a bar facing into the small kitchen – has a story associated with it, one drawn from chef Henry Onesemo’s memories growing up in Samoa. But more than that, the experience as a whole is itself a story, one that leads from a tiny island to a probable Michelin star, whether this year (New Zealand’s first as part of the Michelin guide) or in the future. (Update: the restaurant did in fact receive its well-deserved star!)

The dining bar is a perch. From here, I and five (as best as I can tell) other diners – a second bar holds four more who begin their journey a couple hours into mine – can see everything Chef Henry and his small team are doing. But it is also a vantage point into the concept behind Tala, into the elevation of Samoan cuisine, and into the mind of some truly wonderful humans. While the food tells half of the story, it is our conversations with those preparing it that gives the other part. We are encouraged to have those conversations, to ask questions, to joke even. And in so doing, everything that makes Tala incredible comes into focus.

Henry Onesemo came to Auckland to be a chef. With a Samoan background, he quickly found a job (first as an unpaid stage and then a paid cook) working for Michael Meredith. Meredith has been considered the best chef here in Auckland for decades, and his newest venture, Metita, has been considered to be one of the most innovative upscale Pacific Island restaurants in the world.

Like Meredith, Henry initially thought to open his own restaurant as pan-Pacific, bringing together the melting pot of Pacific Island cultures that call Auckland home. And truly, that number is dizzying, with communities here from Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Indonesia, the Philippines, and so many more. Auckland is said to have the largest Pacific Island expat community in the world. (And while this article will focus just on Tala, you can try food from all over the Pacific here in Auckland.) But Samoa was home, so Henry decided to give pure Samoan cuisine a try, to see if there was a demand for it.

To hear Henry speak of Tala’s founding (first as a pop up in 2022 and then in its current iteration in late 2023), he was unsure of whether or not there was a place for reimagined upscale Samoan food. Samoan cuisine features such luxurious staples as canned corned beef, sea worms, and curry. But armed with memories, faith, K-Mart dishes, and his wife Debby, Tala opened. And in less than three years, it has become one of the most award-winning restaurants – and hardest reservations to get – in New Zealand.

Today, the dishes are no longer from K-Mart (Henry jokes constantly that Tala doesn’t have “Sky City casino money,” a playful dig at Meredith and Metita, although Henry honors Michael Meredith as his professional mentor) but the love put in by a tiny team of four in the kitchen when I was there (plus a few front of house and presumably some others doing prep and cleaning) hasn’t changed one bit. And the story of Samoan culture and food is told with the same passion as the day Tala opened.

I’m not going to go through every dish here, both because I don’t have enough words to use to describe just how tasty everything was and because when you visit you might have some new innovations to try. Sea worms have been replaced by white bait fish (although we did get to see the worms for educational purposes), and canned corned beef “upgraded” to a finely diced sirloin – it still reminds of its inspiration, though – but dishes and flavors feel incredibly authentic.

At one point, I ask Henry what his family and friends on Samoa have said to him, and he smiles as he reads me a recent review from a Samoan guest, one that glows in its praise of the food as memories of home.

So when Henry painstakingly rolls out panakeke (a puffed cross between a donut and a pancake) that will be stuffed with pickled mushrooms and cheese, he knows he is paying homage to what Samoa and its cuisine means, and not just to tourists.

At the heart of the Samoan culinary experience is cooking with fire. And here at Tala, just about every dish has at least one element that is made over a fire – carefully tended to by one of the chefs – or with smoke. Smoked apple juice finishes off a fruit course. Fish carcasses dry and smoke over the fire, and will become a broth. Even a coconut dessert is served with smoke.

But the highlight is the bbq course, a two-pronged delight of chicken and pork. The pork takes the form of a rib, slowly cooked for hours and then finished on the fire. The chicken is stuffed with banana leaves and hot coals, and then cooked atop the fire wrapped in more banana leaves, in Tala’s take on a traditional Samoan ground oven called an umu.

But fire also conjures images of community, of people sitting around and swapping stories. For me sitting at the bar, that is the true magic of Tala. Here, sitting around the fire, Henry shares tales of his life on Samoa. He speaks of the journey he took to get here, of how hiring Masa, his sommelier, added a second wine fridge and three more pages to his wine list. (The wine pairings here are supposed to be incredible, but I opt for a playful cocktail list. One pairs smoked whiskey, and that truly adds to the theme of the night.) I joke with Andre, a chef from Italy who had never imagined cooking this cuisine, that he will return with the idea of lasagna wrapped in banana leaves. (For the record, Andre tells me he thinks about that all night and believes it will work. And Henry jokes that he will try it on an upcoming menu. So if you see that, it’s my idea.)

Over the course of three hours and a dozen or so dishes, I am made to feel part of Henry’s family. I learn about Samoa, I share in the excitement of the kitchen, I hear all about the journey from a small island to Auckland and from the basic dream of a concept to the reality of Tala. It is three hours of so much more than just amazing food. It is three hours of love, of laughter, of community, and of cultural bridge building.

Some food memories transcend dishes and flavors. Dining at Tala will forever be among those. If the sharpness of my recollections of the food itself should fade with time and distance, the feeling of being here – of being home here – will not. When I close my eyes, I will see the fire, I will see Henry, and I will see people coming together out of love for a tiny Pacific island nation.

Thank you so much to Tataki Auckland Unlimited and to Tala for hosting me for one of the most memorable meals of my life.

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