Metro NZ

Welcome to your regular dispatch from the World Wide Web. We’re bringing you, the Metro reader, daily updates on the best in food, culture, politics and more on our website, metromag.co.nz. We’ve got a new columnist in Metro, Wellington political com

Dear Jess, I have a frustrating issue. I was engaged to create an updated website brand by an influencer. The influencer was paid at the conclusion of the project but hasn’t paid me. In fact, she altered the needs list after the job was done and to

Yeshe Dawa is apologising for talking too much. This is despite the fact I’m visiting her cosy Mt Albert home precisely because I want to hear what she has to say. She’s not used to talking; she’s more of a listener. She likes to ask gentle, probing

In Papatoetoe, I would fall asleep to the faint rumble of trucks on the Southern Motorway and wake to spend anywhere between 20 minutes and over an hour on that same motorway. In Mt Eden, my new neighbourhood, the occasional whir of a train passes

Henare, a 30-year-old writer living in Auckland, is telling me about his most disastrous date in recent memory. “It started off well and we were talking about our personal lives, so I raised being part Māori and how it impacted my childhood, which sh

So it has come to this. Three years after Phil Goff’s almost uncontested election as mayor, nothing substantial has changed. Despite Goff having an undisputed mandate and a friendly prime minister and finance minister, Auckland’s public transport sys

Humans despise hypocrites. Family-values campaigners found to have wild sexual proclivities; politicians who complain about extravagant spending and then get done for dodgy expenses; priests who pray for the weak — and then prey on them; environmenta

Did you know this country’s founding document is the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863? I know the popular answer is the Treaty of Waitangi, but perhaps a better answer is the legislation that made raupatu — land confiscations — and European settlemen

God, you wouldn’t want to have lived in 1950s Auckland. It was dull, dark and frightening; a city so repressed and constrained that the only glimmer of hope was when Rock Around The Clock opened at the Regent Theatre. It was like lightening had struc

“Hi, Phil,” John Tamihere says, turning his gaze to the middle distance. “Hi,” Goff replies, doing the same. Tamihere is campaigning at the Ōtara Markets with members of the Pacific Leadership Forum. Goff is there by himself, shaking hands. It’s an u

Auckland’s Hilton hotel has unveiled 21 new luxury rooms on the top floor. With stunning views of the harbour and surrounding cityscape, the refurbished Level 8 rooms are little pockets of luxury on the waterfront. Adding to the existing 166 designe

There’s no denying it — houses have become even less affordable. Over the past five years, New Zealand house prices increased by 45%. Rents rose by 26%. Average weekly earnings increased by just 15%. When my wife and fellow economist, Selena, and I

You’ve wanted to get off the renting treadmill for years now, after the parade of cold, damp houses you’ve lived in with their ill-fitting windows and doors and mould on the bathroom ceiling. And there’s the landlord peering into your bedroom every

Word on the street is that it’s hard to get on the property ladder. Nobody’s denying that – especially in Auckland. But what if it isn’t the mirage you’ve been imagining, or the ladder as lofty as you first thought? We talked to a diverse range of fi

Kris Ah Ta moved to Onehunga in 1997, a couple of years after the Dress-Smart mall opened. A single mum working as a teacher aide with three little girls, she felt Onehunga had everything she needed — lots of public transport options (so it didn’t ma

The last thing I ever ate at Clooney is the thing that will forever stand out in my mind as an emblem for the restaurant’s 13 years in business. It was 11pm on a Tuesday, the end of a three-hour degustation, and the final dish came out, described on

White-tableclothed Cantonese restaurants won’t be having a renaissance any time soon in Auckland. In fact, the numbers are already dwindling. We have some stalwarts — Grand Park, Grand Harbour, China Hong Kong in Birkenhead, Canton Café — but Aucklan

Monique Fiso is New Zealand’s most important chef. There may be chefs with more restaurants, more revenue, more Instagram followers, more TV shows, more cookbooks, more Michelin stars on their résumé, or more appearances on the World’s Top 50 Restaur

Dunedin’s got a casual feel, and it’s a pretty good place to eat. At its best, the city makes excellent use of southern produce and booze, in restaurants that feel like living rooms, where the service is relaxed. And increasingly, those restaurants a

I went to Gerome for lunch on a bright cold winter day, but from the warmth of our table, looking out onto the Parnell rise, it felt like spring. We were drinking a salty, briny white wine made from assyrtiko on the Greek island of Santorini, where t

When you first start to hear people talking about natural wine, one of the first questions it implies is, “If this is natural, is other wine unnatural?” I asked the same thing when, a couple of years ago, I first tasted a wine from Libiamo — the youn

In Ancient Rome, circa sometime BC, cacio e pepe was the dish of shepherds. They would accompany their grazing sheep as they munched through the Apennine Mountains, and would carry some hard, aged pecorino, pepper and dried pasta to fuel their herdin

As visionary business ideas go, it’s hardly in the same league as Facebook or the iPhone, but the need for one is so obvious that you can’t help wondering: why the hell didn’t anyone think of it before? There hasn’t been a record-pressing plant in N

New Zealand property queen Nikki Connors knows the investment property market. She’s been around for longer than most, and has guided clients through multiple property cycles. “Property is, and will remain, the best long-term investment option for m

My grandmother Nancie Morton made this green dress (01) when she was a young teacher in Auckland in the 1930s. Her mother was a seamstress and taught her to sew. It has incredibly fine embroidery and would have been saved for special occasions. I re

On the corner of Dominion Rd’s Balmoral eatery hotspot, one door down from its original location, is New Flavour. The eatery has been around for 15 years — or 20 — current owner Nicolas Ma doesn’t remember, but it’s been a long time. He bought the bu

Fads come and go… and everyone is susceptible to the odd fashion faux pas now and then. That’s just life. However, accepting that you made the wrong call on the shade of brown of your new suede boots is one thing; finding out six months down the line

In 2008, I flew from London to Zurich to see an exhibition by the New Zealand painter Judy Millar. When I got to the gallery, the paintings surprised me; rather than the exuberant colour of so much of her work, they were mostly pitched in grey-scale

Aspirational and progressive, the new BMW 1 Series is coming soon. With an outstanding and advanced design language, the BMW 1 Series distinguishes itself from the crowd at the very first glance. State-of-the-art chassis technologies guarantee an ult

America did not invent comics, or even — depending on how you feel about Tintin, Moebius, or Japanese manga — perfect them. But America gave the world Calvin and Hobbes, Dykes To Watch Out For, Carl Barks’ Scrooge McDuck, and a bazillion other comics

Reading Promises Promises: 80 Years of Wooing New Zealand Voters, I found it impossible not to wonder whether Dr Claire Robinson has expertly documented an era of mass political communication that is coming to an end in the internet age. It is a “vi