Is this one of the best places to eat in New Zealand?

Your dinner looks you dead in the eye when you open the door at Cazador. On the walls are the taxidermied heads of stags, ducks and goats whose brethren all appear on the menu at this family-run Auckland restaurant, which has been cooking wild meats since 1987. Take your vegan friends elsewhere; to eat here, you really have to be game for game.

I'm here because a hospitality friend from Melbourne told me it was the best place she'd eaten on a recent trip to New Zealand - but you need to be a bit of a hunter yourself to find it. "It's way out in the suburbs," she warned. Even the concierge at my inner-city hotel raised an eyebrow when I said I was heading to the southwest residential area of Mount Eden. But once the first round of house-made charcuterie arrives, I know I've bagged a trophy. The selection changes depending on what animals chef Dariush Lolaiy can get his hands on; he and wife and co-owner Rebecca Smidt have longstanding relationships with local hunters and other suppliers to make sure they are only taking from stocks that need to be culled or are in season. We get heritage pork lonzo, Whangaripo buffalo bresaola and a chunky game terrine with red onion marmalade.

We move to a plate of quail hearts studded with pine nuts, pomegranate molasses and thick whorls of labneh - I give their intact feathered mates on the wall a slightly guilty wave as I fork in a mouthful. Poultry hearts are a bit of a mental leap for me but these are magnificent.

Venison is Cazador's signature and the preparation changes regularly. On the menu for us is a coal-grilled backstrap served with a very polite dressing of pistachio and mint. I had visions of something I'd pick up by the bone and gnaw like a caveman. But game here is restrained, elegant and deeply considered, proving meat doesn't have to be heavy-handed or brutish - even if the admonishing looks from the walls suggest otherwise. cazador.co.nz

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