Michelin stars, octopus guilt and the mystery of the disappearing soup
Tuesday, 7 July 2026
Joel Maxwell (Te Rarawa) is a senior journalist.
OPINION: I went to Logan Brown in Wellington on the first day of its Michelin star status and felt very important.
Actually, it was pure coincidence: I’d booked the table weeks ahead for a very special occasion but I realised afterwards I should write about what it’s like to eat at a Michelin star restaurant for the first time.
From the outside the place always reminded me of an old bank, from the inside my dinner guest said it looked a bit like a church. I spotted a single table upstairs in a nearly hidden alcove, with a view of the main floor where we sat. I don’t know how you ascend to the VIP zone but imagined Andrew Little up there with a napkin shoved in his collar, slurping down tagliatelle al ragu and watching Love Island on his mayoral iPad to unwind.
Then it was time to choose our meal. I’m vegan by the way and have a raging tree nut allergy so I had a somewhat limited menu.
My dinner guest, however, started with a taster of the restaurant’s 30-year signature dish, a pāua ravioli in lime butter sauce with a bird’s nest of crunchy sweet potato on top. As the knife drew across the pasta, the dark pāua mince erupted into the butter. The pasta was cooked perfectly, the pāua was excellent, and the sauce delicious.
Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei.
I started with crumbed mushrooms of the regular kind, on top of shitake mushrooms, I think. I find it hard to focus when the waiter describes the food ahead of eating it. I just want to eat.
In this way you might ask if fine dining is wasted on me. Yes and no, but yes. I’m no foodie - just a pig who loves good food, so oink, oink, piggy needs feeding!
Anyway, the waitress poured a splash of soup or some kind of umami broth over the mushrooms, which tasted good. Unfortunately she walked away with the half-filled sauce jug like a punishment. No more soup for you. I still sometimes wonder about whatever happened to that soup.
My guest picked an entree of wood grilled octopus and pork belly with sweet turnip. I begged them to pick something else for the sake of the octopus, which I understand is a very intelligent species. The resulting tentacle was, according to my guest, wonderfully tender but with the tiniest bit of chewy resistance - just enough to give it some delicious textural pizazz along with the pork belly. To a vegan that’s like praising the flavours extracted from Koko the gorilla’s slow-cooked sign-languaging hand, but each to their own.
My main dish was a daikon steak with smooth carrot puree, some charred greens and a crispy turnip strip, maybe. (Once again, I wasn’t paying attention to the meal description.)
The problem with the dish was not that it wasn’t cooked well, or wasn’t seasoned well, or wasn’t full of flavour, which it was. Like all the dishes, it looked amazing, too.
The problem was that it was daikon. What happens when your steak doesn’t steak? I’ve never been a radish man myself, and even after many years really do miss meat, so I’m often plagued by this vegan paradox.
My guest ordered the roasted hāpuku with tora crayfish sausage and a grapefruit caramel dashi butter. The fish looked perfectly cooked, flaking away into the sauce. The sauce became a little too acidic as the dish went on but was otherwise delicious.
Dessert was my favourite, chocolate cake with raspberry sorbet; dark raging against light, or something, you know, contrasty. It was great, and came with those tiny delicate flower petals I always enjoy munching on because I’m not sure they’re even for eating.
My guest picked the orange and milk chocolate mousse cake and loved it.
As we left the bank-church, a man walked in wearing shorts, showing off an ostentatious calf tattoo, and was seated. We’d worried beforehand that we might be under-dressed.
Michelin stars. Whatever. This will still always be New Zealand, which is fine with me.