Jesse Mulligan: The Wine Room on College Hill Is Eyeing Up Michelin Status

It’s not often you get to discover a top chef before they become famous, but there’s a dining room in Auckland right now offering just that. The Wine Room was one of my favourite openings of 2024. A beautiful room on College Hill with a sunny deck, comfy chairs and The service was personal, deeply informed, but fun too. It was, from day one, the absolute best place to take someone you loved, or who you wanted to love you back.A pairing selection at The Wine Room. The food was a pretty key offering, designed and cooked in a cramped kitchen by a hot young chef. As the bookings and events calendar filled up, these facilities were expanded and you could reliably drop in for a glass of pinot (actually probably something more interesting than that), knowing you could kick on for a three-course meal if you wanted to.The downside of building your business around a particular chef is that one day that chef might leave unexpectedly, which is what happened at The Wine Room this year. I found this out only by chance but owner David Nash told me it was “Auckland hospitality’s worst-kept secret” (the downside to keeping the industry at arm’s-length as I do, is that you’re generally the last one to hear the good gossip). The Wine Room. Nash has Michelin-level aspirations for The Wine Room, so wasn’t willing to hand over his kitchen to the first chef to walk through the door. In fact he said no to the first, fourth and seventh chefs to walk through the door. And then he heard from Kirsten del Valle.Perhaps you’re familiar with Noma, ranked Best Restaurant in the World on five occasions. del Valle has worked at that Copenhagen “food laboratory” twice under its current executive chef, preceded by four years at Les Amis, Sebastien Lepinoy’s three-star restaurant in Singapore. Meeting her, it’s hard to believe she has done all this in her young life (not to mention local experience at Passage Rock, RATA and The Grove).Head chef Kirsten del Valle hard at work. Photo / Supplied The Wine Room. But it was her manner more than her CV that really stood out to Nash (and to fellow Auckland hospo hero Alfie Ingham, an old friend who had stepped in to help steady the ship). In his words, “there was no ego and no pitch, just someone who wants to run a precise, serious kitchen and take a proper shot at something great. That’s exactly what I’ve always wanted this place to be.”I visited last week and found all this out by chance, but you can already see her personality and training coming through in this, her first head chef role. Her Singapore experience was “as classical French as it gets” while Noma was, of course, cutting-edge modern: “Nordic ingredients, fermentation, preservation and a real respect for Japanese culinary philosophy. It shaped how I cook now, which is French technique, Nordic ingredients and Japanese principles.” The Wine Room. Photo / SuppliedIt takes a long time to turn over a menu and she reckons she is only 30% there, but you can see a glimpse of what is to come in the event menus she has put together in the past few weeks: whipped buffalo curd cornet with yuzu kosho seasoning, venison loin with pickled mustard jus, crudo with pāua foam and onion flower. For now, on the main menu you can sample her sublime tomato tart - a combination of intensely rich comte cheese with intensely fresh tomatoes, a flavour-packed truffled mushroom bao bun heaped with fried shallots and pickled enoki, or a colourfully plated octopus tentacle garnished with a list of ingredients as long as the tentacle itself. Women are still remarkably under-represented at the top of professional kitchens, and Kirsten’s arrival is worth celebrating for that reason alone. But what makes her really exciting is the prospect of seeing what someone with her experience and talent can achieve when given a full kitchen and an open brief. The Wine Room. The Wine Room.There was something special about hearing everyone was scrambling for Olivia Dean tickets, knowing that you were among the 1000 people who saw her at The Powerstation gig two years ago. This might be the foodie equivalent. Making predictions is a fool’s game, but I’d stake my reputation on Kirsten del Valle being a household name among Auckland diners within a couple of years.Read more by Jesse MulliganWhat you’ve asked, and what he’s shared.