A Destination That Rewards Intention
How Taste Held Under Pressure
Before I left for New Zealand, this time for real, my yoga teacher asked me what my intention was for my trip. While I had a strong sense of what the first outing of 2026 as The Untethered Traveler should bring, I hadn’t yet fully articulated my why.
Up until that point, I had been carefully guarding my decision to even visit New Zealand. Before one ever sets foot here, they inevitably wade through a super-charged dynamic of recommendations that read more like a guilt-ridden, how-could-you-not directive than inspiration.
Do this, see that.
Stay North. Go South.
Fly.
Train.
Ferry.
Day trip it.
Oh god no – overnight it.
Don’t taste there, taste here.
Drink red not white.
Drink white not red.
Rose? Too sweet, too dry.
Exhausting!
Now that I’ve moved around a bit here, I understand why New Zealand elicits such fiercely spirited opinion from anyone fortunate enough to have made the journey or call it home.
In Tessera 51, A Trip to Be Taken, I wrote about how a logistics mistake saved me from sourcing my New Zealand experience through sprawling consensus instead of personal passion and proclivity. I sensed something felt off as I packed for the wrong version of this trip but dismissed my dissenting inner voice as nothing more than a little anxiety and perfectionism.
As I unpacked, however, from the trip not taken, I could see just how much I had drifted from my center and compass. Benign as my reasons may have been, fueled only by a wanting to do New Zealand right, they would have diminished my trip’s impact and most definitely its intention. But now, in reflection from the very place itself, my heart races as I write toward an obvious conclusion.
All of the reasons that make New Zealand such an attractive destination to visit also position it as a compelling playground from which to pressure test the merits of pure intentional travel.
New Zealand presents such a ripe challenge exactly because of all the build-up that exists in the travel ether around it, the distance one has to travel to get there and the magnitude of this island nation’s natural beauty and awe.
It therefore has a unique potential to reveal more about the patterns that move us.
I smile at the first example that comes to mind, frivolous and trivial though it may be. When I got in the car to leave Man O’War Vineyards on Waiheke Island after a delightfully drawn out wine-tasting and lunch beachside, my driver asked me if I had ziplined. My answer was a polite but implied [hell] no. I chuckled thinking, this body does not zip.
I did fall back in love with Chardonnay, I thought quietly to myself as we pulled away from the winery and I caught my first glimpses of the Island’s rolling hills and valleys.
And there it was, clear as it always is. Taste leading the way to and through another new adventure from another new place.
New Zealand travel is an exercise in both temptation and conviction. Temptation to conform or do this country someone else’s way and conviction to stick to the nudges and callings of our own rhythms and frequencies.
Because this time, I stripped my plans back using only Taste as compass, I am finally moving with an agenda that guides and inspires both me and my intention. That intention – to get crystal clear on what I want to create in this one bountiful life – is making itself known as I had hoped it would between collisions with marvelous Kiwi creativity and generosity.
It is a state that feels still, settled and stirred up all at once. And from it, I am continually reminded why this trip was meant to be taken – why this trip had to be taken.
Taste isn’t confined to flavor or elite privilege and access. Taste is so much more expansive than these single-minded expressions. Taste is recognizing and falling into a natural rhythm with the signals and curiosities that attract us. As the forces of nature, storytelling, art, connectivity and flavor accumulate inside us, our taste contorts and forms.
We contort and form.
Whether we realize it or not, when we travel we mold experiences – slight and significant – into our own peculiar worldview. This deeply personal process is why my way of doing New Zealand is ineffective nonsense to some and so utterly defining and soul shaping to me.
I have been here not even a week before three stacked experiences with taste give me the pause, perspective and energy I need to tackle the work behind the work. To get clear on what I’m meant to create and why.
Had it not been for a first of its kind exchange for me with Debby Onesemo, the co-owner of Auckland’s revered Samoan restaurant, Tala, I don’t know if I would have made the trip to New Zealand this year, in March, when I did.
Inside what was probably just a routine and polite email confirmation for her, sat an overwhelmingly powerful message of validation for me. She didn’t just say how sorry she was I wouldn’t be dining with them after my first trip fell through. She referenced my writing and my travels.
By replying as she did, she saw me. More importantly, she saw who I have been working so hard to become.
There is something so deliriously motivating about being seen when we’re in pursuit of our purpose. The most unassuming gestures can lay down just enough of the path in front of us, that we can do again what sometimes felt so impossible, take the next best step forward.
The night before I sit down to write Tessera 53, Tala is named by Time Magazine as one of the world’s most exciting destinations to visit. Every plate that comes out of Tala’s kitchen is inspired by Chef Henry Onesemo’s childhood in Samoa.
The experience is meticulously crafted. It is also refreshingly real. While there are humble roots grounding each plate, there is bold identity and innovation coursing through each bite. Each time the waitstaff lays down another dish, another memory, they religiously do so with a clear, genuine conviction and passion for turning Chef Henry’s testimony into wholesome art.
On the surface this is storytelling through exquisite dining and dining through exquisite storytelling. But at its heart, dinner at Tala is something so much more nourishing. It is human connection and belonging. It is purpose and calling in action.
I believe, just like we come to read the right books at the right time and meet the right people at just the right moment, we also come to feast in front of the right creative spirits who are destined to fill our guts and souls with just the right helpings of creativity and courage. I can’t imagine I’ll ever come to dine in a place that made so much sense of the world I want to live in as Tala did.
The very next night, I dined at Alma in Auckland’s Britomart precinct. Alma was the first of many places I would see one of my favorites – vermut rojo – featured on the menu. It made the most sense here, as Alma is an absolutely phenomenal Spanish restaurant.
If any dinner was going to help me fend off the jet lag that hit me hard that day, this would have been it. But even as I tasted my way through one sensational plate after another including their anchovy tomato tostada and their to die for pork pinchito – my satiated, salivating taste buds were no match for the 19 hour time difference. I went home early, one Vermouth in, without capping the night off with one of my other Spanish favorites, Basque cheesecake.
New Zealand, as I later learned in chatting to a lovely bartender in Wellington, is in the middle of a vermouth renaissance, so thankfully there were more sips of its splendid sweetness to come. At no point have I wanted for taste here. It is as I planned and imagined it would be. Accessible, friendly, creative and downright spectacular.
And while I had high hopes for lunch at Te Motu Vineyard, so much so I planned my Waiheke Island visits around it – the visit I end up taking and the one I didn’t – I never would have expected to have had the best meal of my life there. Rather than risk overexplaining it, I have chosen to simply display it here.
On a Monday in March, their first day of harvest, a sassy young woman, the good kind of sassy, not the bad, guided my wine tasting, masterfully influenced what I selected to eat and gently nudged me to “invest” in the shipment of wine that should be on my doorstep when I get home.
That afternoon, Te Motu’s wine became a must-stock and one I will forever search for on any restaurant wine list in the future, their au poivre became the new gold standard by which I will measure all au poivre moving forward, and their chicken liver parfait with the warm strawberry rhubarb jam filled donut? That will no doubt bring me back one day to Te Motu’s Shed for more taste and self-discovery.
The more I reflect on the places taste has already taken me, the more I come back not to menus and reservations, but people. Through their eyes, I see taste has done so much more than just piqued my curiosity, opened my heart and brought me best and first evers here in New Zealand.
In playing witness to where others have dared and dreamt to go with their own stories, potential and vision, I see what every journey I have ever taken and will ever take is really all about – getting there together.
Small stacks. Small plates.
And all the unassuming gestures.
Every week, I send one new Tessera Blog on taste, travel and the truths we collect along the way. If this piece resonated, I’d be honored if you’d share or subscribe.
