Bay of Plenty in New Zealand: hiking, beaches, restaurants that champion local produce and more await you in an area brimming with authenticity

The Bay of Plenty combines all the country’s star attributes in a single package – beautiful beaches, watersports, hiking and incredible dining opportunities

Maori cuisine meets Japanese izakaya dining culture at one restaurant, brew pubs serve thirsty travellers, while a wildlife sanctuary offers adventure

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Tauranga and beaches viewed from Mount Maunganui in New Zealand. Tauranga is the capital of the Bay of Plenty, a region whose attractions include its hiking trails, a wildlife sanctuary, and restaurants that champion local produce. Photo: Getty Images

Ed Peters

Published: 7:15am, 5 Feb 2024

When New Zealanders take a holiday, many head for the Bay of Plenty.

A couple of hours’ drive south of Auckland, the bay – a bight along the northern coast of North Island that stretches for 260km (160 miles) from the Coromandel Peninsula in the west to Cape Runaway in the east – seems to combine all the country’s star attributes into a single package.

The beaches stretch for 125km, there is surfing, fishing and swimming with dolphins offshore, and plenty of hiking and history on land, where superlative kiwifruit, avocados and Manuka honey are produced in abundance.

Indeed, the dining on offer is one of the bay’s chief attributes, and many of its restaurants come with a tale attached by way of an amuse-bouche.

Pork belly and watercress ramen from Izakai in the Bay of Plenty. Photo: Izakai

Take Izakai, which anchors the gourmet strip abutting Bayview Mall in Tauranga, the Bay of Plenty’s largest city. The restaurant pivots around a long curved bar and has tables scattered both inside and out. Natural wood and stone impart a solid Kiwi feel.

Owner Liam Millard is a biological scientist by training. In 2017, the New Zealander mused on his future prospects over a post-Rugby Sevens beer at WTF, in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay, he tells me, and wondered whether it would be possible to switch careers and open a restaurant that merged ultra-casual izakaya dining culture (which he had become fond of while teaching English in Osaka, Japan) with Maori cuisine.