Jesse Mulligan restaurant review: Havelock North’s Mijita serves the best guacamole in NZ

Jesse Mulligan finds a Hawke’s Bay Latin American restaurant to write home about.

Havelock North can feel like a quiet and conservative town (I drove through around election time and saw nothing but blue corflutes) but the dining scene has always been pretty excellent, so long as you don’t want a late table. I was visiting this time with a couple of hundred others for a sporting event and you could see how the swollen population was adding to the local economy. Every hotel room was booked, the only decent Airbnb rentals left were approaching $1000 a night, and most dining rooms were full of happy guests.

Mijita had been recommended to me by several locals who knew what they were talking about and I was glad to find time to review it. It’s a little restaurant at the end of a lane that forms most of Havelock North’s dining precinct: Alessandro’s Pizza, a local institution, and Picu Japanese – which also has its own late-night cocktail bar (in practice I’ve found this shuts around 9pm) – and across the road, Pipi, who are as famous for their cookbooks as for their cooking. Around me happy diners ate al fresco under fairy lights, the locals distinct for how much of an effort they’d made to dress up while us Aucklanders threw jumpers over our orienteering gear and tucked in.

As at Tinfeny’s recently, it’s a shame to visit a lovely owner-operated restaurant and not find the lovely owner-operators in attendance. I have no problem with people taking time off, it’s just bad luck that I have to write about a place when the heart of the service is missing. Nonetheless I had a great time here on a busy night, convincing the waitress to squeeze us in on an outdoor table next to a gas heater that still struggled to take the chill out of the Hawke’s Bay winter air (they have blankets but have you ever tried to wear a blanket on a barstool while eating a taco?).

I will go out on a limb here and say that the Mijita guacamole is the best guacamole in New Zealand. Yes it helps that I was very hungry; yes it helps that the corn chips were hot out of the fryer, but (with all due respect to Nic Watt’s excellent tableside experience at Inca) there was something about this one – the smooth parts extra smooth and the chunky parts extra chunky. Texture is a big thing! But flavour too: there was no secret ingredient, just buttery ripe avos and a very spicy chili sauce on the side if you wanted it.

They use proper masa tortillas from local Napier company Hands Down, cutting and cooking them for the nachos but serving them whole, soft and lightly heated as tacos. When you have an ingredient this good it’s tempting to add it to every dish but one of things I liked the best was the other ways they managed to add crunch to the plate. Ceviche came with fried green banana slices, which had little flavour but a great texture with the raw fish (it was quite raw, a confident move from the chef not to over-“cook” it in the citrus). We tried for a little while to balance the pieces of translucent snapper on the banana slices before eating them but this didn’t really work, so we asked for a couple of spoons and scooped everything instead.

Then there was pork shoulder, which came with grated, fried potato. You don’t see so much tuber action in Mexican cooking but it’s a staple of South America and its use here was one of the ways in which Mijita embraces its broad Latin brief. The crunchy potato is the foundation for a small mountain of spiced, pulled pork, with a wetter guacamole and fresh, onion-heavy salsa sprinkled over the top.

Tacos are a must-order – my favourite was the vegetarian option, filled with glossy sauteed mushrooms and finished with feta cheese – but if you love that special aji sauce you can only get at proper Latin restaurants then order the grilled chicken, with deep-fried potato rounds on the side and plenty of that deep, pleasantly-spicy, pale chili sauce drizzled over everything. Microplaned Hohepa cheese and green olive tapenade powered up the flavour bomb.

And one of the best things about Mijita is the margaritas – served in bright colours and perfect proportions with messily salted rims. You’ll often find a chilli version of this drink but Mijita does a special “green chilli margarita”, which suits the lime colour palette and is garnished with a slice of raw jalapeno.

And look, I’m not saying spending time in Havelock North turns you into a National Party voter but after a couple of drinks I could feel myself becoming seduced.

“How would you like to pay for your meal?” the waitress asked me.

“Economic growth!” I said. “It’ll fix everything.”

In the meantime, I handed over my credit card.

MIJITA

Cuisine: Latin American

Address: 17 Joll Rd, Havelock North

Website: Mejita.co.nz

Drinks: Fully licensed

Reservations: Accepted

From the menu: Guacamole and nachos $16; ceviche $24; slow-cooked pork $27; aji chicken $29; mushroom taco $9; beef taco $10; $tres leches cake 16

Rating: 17/20

Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Outstanding, don’t delay.

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