6 July 2026
New Zealand's hospitality sector has earned its first Michelin stars. Poorly managed music could be standing in the way of more.
By Greer Davies, Director, OneMusic New Zealand
Fifteen New Zealand restaurants were awarded Michelin stars late last month, with one, Essence in Queenstown, scoring two stars. It is, by any measure, a significant moment in the history of the country’s hospitality sector. It took a $6.3 million investment by Tourism New Zealand, years of lobbying, hospitality summits at Parliament, and persistent campaigning by the Restaurant Association and Hospitality New Zealand to entice Michelin Guide organisers to sample our slice of the world.
More than listing excellent restaurants, the Michelin Guide signals to the world that New Zealand dining is worth travelling for. It also raises the bar for every operator who wants to be in the rarified company of star performers.
The shift in New Zealand hospitality over the past 10 to 15 years has been hard-won. The Restaurant Association and Hospitality New Zealand created a culture of recognition by highlighting achievements through regional and national awards. Chefs became cultural figures, building followers on social media, and loyal diners in the real world. When Sid Sahrawat opens a pop-up in Grey Lynn while his new Cassia restaurant is being fitted out, it fills every night.
Working in hospitality is no longer seen as something you do while waiting for a real career – it is the career, and the calibre of people in the industry reflects that. When the standard of the people behind the pass rises, the quality of the entire offering tends to rise with it: sourcing, storytelling, and attention to every element of the guest experience.
Michelin's inspectors evaluate restaurants against five criteria: quality of ingredients, technical mastery, harmony of flavours, the chef's personality as expressed through the menu, and consistency across visits. Music does not appear on that list, though perhaps it should, because inspectors don’t arrive at their decisions through taste alone - they absorb the entire atmosphere, often flavoured by music, before even taking their first bite.
In my mind, Michelin’s criteria describe an experience that is more than simply about food; it is about a coherent whole, one in which every element of the environment either reinforces or obfuscates the chef's intention. A soundscape at odds with that intention creates dissonance before a single dish arrives.
Many operators now understand they need a music strategy to build a sound environment that speaks to clientele. But a sizeable number still plug in a device, let staff choose, or rely on the free tier of a streaming service.
I’ve sat in busy, well-run cafés and watched customers frown the moment an advertisement interrupts background music. Staff often don’t hear it as they’ve habituated their working environment so completely that what is obviously annoying customers becomes inaudible to them.
New Zealand's culinary identity is shaped by pacific influences, Māori provenance, and a generation of chefs who champion local produce and local culture with creative ambition. It is the thing that makes New Zealand dining worth a Michelin Guide in the first place.
Tala, in Parnell, now the bearer of one Michelin Star, understands this. The small, Pacific-orientated restaurant’s owners built a playlist as deliberately as they built their menu, because they understood that their guests were not just eating – they were meant to feel immersed, temporarily transported.
Earlier this year, we spoke with TALA's executive chef and owner, Henry Onesemo, who said music is woven into the TALA experience, helping create the warmth, emotion and sense of place that guests feel from the moment they walk through the door. “We rely solely on the music to kind of tug on that emotional heartstring. It’s very, very important to us,” he said.
The science behind this intuition is well established. Research into how sound influences taste perception– including work I have seen demonstrated live at a Restaurant Association conference, where participants listening to different music described the same chocolate in entirely different terms – confirms that what we hear directly affects taste perception. What we hear changes what we taste. Operators who have spent significant sums on ingredient quality are, without realising it, leaving part of that investment on the table when they neglect their music choices.
New Zealand hospitality has professionalised its food, its people, its service, and its fit-out. The soundscape, in too many rooms, is still managed the way it was in 2005, as background noise rather than a designed element. That will become harder to overlook in a sector that has just invited the world's most demanding diners to the table.
Share
