Michael Dearth: The Grove Restaurant Owner on it being named in Trip Advisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards Best of the Best for 2024

Two New Zealand restaurants have been named among the world’s best. 

The Grove in Auckland and Queenstown’s Nest Bar + Kitchen made it onto Trip Advisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards Best of the Best list for 2024, a milestone fewer than 1% of the 8 million listings achieve. 

The Grove came in 9th in the fine dining category, and owner Michael Dearth says to get something like this is fantastic. 

He says that when a lot of people leave the restaurant, they’re just gushing with compliments. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the trip Advisor Travelers Choice Awards are out. This
is in hospital and Grove Restaurant in Auckland turns out
to be the ninth best in the world in its category.
Of the eight million listings worldwide, fewer than one percent
achieve this particular milestone. Anyway, the Groves owner is Michael Death,
who is with us. Michael, very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning Mike, So you were having me.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
No worries it all. So you're in the fine dining
space for this particular one. How would you describe fine
dining generally at the moment in healthy spirits or not
so good?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well, worldwide, it's pretty banged up. In New Zealand, it's
really rough.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
So to get something like this is fantastic.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah. Yeah, we have an attention to detail. We work
closely with some fantastic artisan producers and yeah, we have
a big team. It takes a big team to pull
this off.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
How does the trip Advisory thing actually work. It's people
who are in and go there and fill out the
forms or the answer the questions or whatever.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah. So it's an online platform for people that travel
the world. So when people from someone might be from
Egypt to one person might be from the Ukraine, one
person will be from Atlanta, Georgia. So people around the world,
they'll dine and then they'll leave some comments about your restaurant.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Would that be a fair representation, do you think? See?
Because I've been to a lot of restaurants, I've never
left an online comment in my life, So would this
be a fair representation with the people who come to
your place?

Speaker 2 (01:30):
I think so. A lot of times when people leave,
when they leave the restaurant, they're just gushing there with
compliments and they love the place. And most people book
online these days. We always send out a little message
after they dine and saying we appreciate that you've dined
with us. If you like to provide us any feedback,

(01:50):
here is our email you can get in touch with us,
or if you'd like to leave a review, here's something
on trip Advisor with a link. And people go on
and leave leave their thoughts fantastic, and you know the
growth there has been. This is our twentieth year. We
celebrated our twentieth year in business this year, so we've
had a big year, a lot of celebration, so I
think we've been it's been consistent. We've been consistent for

(02:11):
a long time.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
That's the trick. And I know, do you still do Baduci?
You're still running Baduci?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yep, still yep. I'm there several times a day. Then
I'm back at the grove several times a day. I
have the shortest distance between Baduzci and the grove. Went
a few little minor illegal U turns.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
There you go, because I'm Baduci's in the casual category
as well, So you're obviously doing something Hospo quickly your
take on it. In this economic environment at the moment,
in this country, where are we at with that?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
It's pretty brutal. I won't lie, and now I'll tell
you you do feel like sometimes there's a conspiracy to
kind of kick us when we're down, you know, everything
from the bridge being out for a year connecting the
viaduct to the Windard Quarter. It's a bit ridiculous. How
long it takes, you know, a great nation like New Zealand,
we can't see him to get this bridge done, for example,

(03:04):
really just hurts us in a situation where it's already
a challenge.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Well, you're doing your best, Michael, and he won a
couple of great awards, and I congratulate you Michael Durth,
who's the Grove Restaurant also, but it's the top ten
fine dining in the country by the way. The Grove
Sales and Auckland, Jerboy, Steakhount in Queenstown, Logan Brown, Wellington,
Craigie Range, habloc Rata and Queenstown are he Auckland, Sidhart, Auckland, Paris,
butter Auckland, mud brick On Wayhicki Island. So there's some

(03:30):
there's all some flesh dining to be done in this
beautiful country of ours.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
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Speaker 1 (03:38):
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