Herzog, Blenheim

(Herald rating: * * * * *)

The best restaurant in New Zealand is not to be found on Ponsonby Rd, the Viaduct, Courtenay Place or near the Square. To find it, turn off the vine-lined Blenheim straight known as the Golden Mile, on to a lane and into a white-gravelled yard ringed with white standard roses and box and pines.

The best restaurant in New Zealand is inside the beautifully restored, white weatherboard and timber slate-roofed original farmhouse - which it isn't. It is only a couple of years old. The original cottage, 140 years old, hides behind. Welcome to Herzog.

Ove\r elderberry flower aperitifs and salmon pancake canapes on the verandah, Hans and Therese Herzog tell their story in the warm Marlborough evening. Visiting Hans' brother in the early 90s, Therese and Hans fell in love with New Zealand. They commuted for a few years before committing to a complete move, Hans to pursue his passion to produce the perfect pinot noir (and a bunch of other grapes for fun and profit) and Therese to ...

On their property in Switzerland - the stay-at-home branch of Hans' family still cultivate the vineyard they planted in 1482 - she had opened a restaurant. A Michelin-starred restaurant.

And when they set up here she repeated the exercise. With ditto-decorated chefs. With staff trained in the rigorous Swiss hospitality schools who, as well as tending tables and ovens, learn about wine from the terroir up.

Obsessed with quality ingredients, Therese has been known to fly to Auckland to select fish and return home with tonight's main course under her arm. They work seven days - she sometimes drags Hans out of his pristine barrel room for a day's kayaking - at the winery, cellar shop, garden bistro, gardens, restaurant. "We had to have a place where we knew we could eat well," jokes Therese. So, every Sunday night, that's what they do. This being Sunday, here they are, in a quiet corner.

The dining room is a contemporary take on a Victorian drawing-room, cane chairs, starched cloths, gorgeous chandelier, magnificent silver trolleys.

There is a menu but why think you know better than a chef like Michael Wibbeke? Follow his five-course "Le Grand Menu". Be seduced, transported, delighted. Surrender to Hans' choice of his wines.

Changing weekly, tonight's menu opens with beef carpaccio, eggplant, rocket mousse. "Melting in my mouth," says Julie. Next for me: cream-corn soup, a disc of octopus; for her: courgette flowers stuffed with yellow fin tuna, coriander sauce. "Can I try that?" I ask. "First give me some of yours," she replies.

We strike a deal over the mains. Julie has steamed flounder with scallops but confesses that the shellfish flavour is hard to detect. It might have been hiding under the spinach potato mash or chardonnay beurre blanc sauce.

I knew she really lusted after my lamb rack and rump, ever so gently braised in olive oil, on a white bean emulsion, the fried herb polenta and gremolata contrasting under the soft lights, so allowed her first choice of the northern European and southern island cheeses. The fifth and final course of Wibbeke's paced menu - surrender to Hans' choice of his wines - is a parfait, vanilla and walnut, quarg dumpling beside, apricot coulis spooned atop.

Rarely, in this job, do you have a perfect evening. You'd think that a professional cook and a professional diner could find something to nitpick over. But we couldn't.

Address: 81 Jeffries Rd, Blenheim
Phone: (03) 572 8770
Web: www.herzog.co.nz
Open: Mid-Oct to mid-May
Cuisine: Modern European
Wine: 500 choices: We recommend the house reds
Bottom line: The best restaurant in NZ