Our Story
Cuisine Good Food Awards 2026 • One Hat
It started in the Night Markets
Taco pao, six dollars, and a chalkboard that said SOLD OUT by seven o’clock. We kept the photo because at the time it seemed funny, and now it looks like the beginning of something.
In 2026 Cuisine awarded Nanam one hat in the Good Food Awards, with a score of seventeen. It is the first hat this restaurant has been given, and we are still getting used to saying it out loud.
Jess has been in the kitchen for all ten years of it, and I have been everywhere else. Neither of us has done a single part of this on our own.
Royal Oak to Takapuna
There are now recognised Filipino restaurants in Auckland, and ten years ago there were none. If you had said there would be, most people would have smiled politely.
So if you grew up being told our food was for the house and not for the dining room, tell them. Filipino food made it. And if you were one of the people who sat down anyway, long before any of this, you are part of the reason it happened.
To everyone who has eaten at these tables, in Royal Oak and here in Takapuna, on quiet Tuesdays and full Saturdays, thank you. This is yours as much as it is ours. Salamat po.
A Dios sea la gloria. Jess, Andrew and the whole Nanam family.
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Nanam welcomes you to a relaxed and warm dining experience that will showcase our humble Filipino flavours.