METRO TOP 50 2019 Baduzzi is Metro Peugeot's Restaurant of the Year 2019's Best Service winner and runner-up of Best Smart Restaurant.  As you’d hope with a name that translates to “meatball” in Sicilian, the always-busy Baduzzi is the best Italian-American restaurant in Auckland. More than anything, Baduzzi is a fun place for a meal – with a date, with [...]

"THE ESSENCE OF A RESTAURANT INSPIRED BY FAMILY AND TRADITION" Baduzzi offers an Italian fix with a stop-off in New York for styling and menu tips. It’s a labour of love for owner Michael Dearth, who also owns The Grove. Benjamin Bayly is executive chef at both eateries and his innovation and dedication shine through in Baduzzi’s rustic yet [...]

"A PLACE WHERE PLEASURE COMES FIRST" The trouble with some top chefs is that they forget they're making your dinner. It's an occupational hazard for restaurant reviewers that they put up with all sorts of fashionable culinary nonsense when what they really want to do is have a meal. So when something like Baduzzi happens, we tend to weep [...]

"GOBSMACKINGLY DELICIOUS" Sometime in 2013, Michael Dearth, intrepid owner and manager of The Grove a fine-dining restaurant in St Patricks Square that has twice won our supreme awards, let it be known he was going to open a New York-style meatball joint. Perhaps he was being modest. Baduzzi, in the Wynyard Quarters North Wharf precinct, was certainly inspired by [...]

"ARISE, SIR MICHAEL" How many more great restaurants can possible be coming? For a while there, these monthly reviews read like a tragicomedy - canteen-grade muck and service grotesqueries; these days your humble reviewers are doling out spoons like we are volunteers at a soup kitchen. And now heres Baduzzi, which could be the best of the best. Known [...]

"IT'S CLASSY, IT'S BEAUTIFUL AND IT'S SO MUCH MORE THAN MEATBALLS" For their second restaurant, Michael Dearth and Ben Bayly have parked their fine-dining prowess at The Grove and produced and American-Italian meatball restaurant. Sort of. Forget any thoughts of little old New York corner shop. At this hospitality powerhouse they have aimed far higher, and that is obvious [...]