50-50 is a chef-owned tasting menu restaurant at 22 Maclean Street, Paraparaumu Beach, on New Zealand's Kāpiti Coast, led by chef and owner Helen Turnbull. Rather than an à la carte list, the small dining room offers seasonal six and nine-course tasting menus that celebrate local New Zealand ingredients, shaped by the growers and producers of the region and inspired by the team's global travels.
The menu is often changing and always current: dishes move comfortably between Japan, Europe and Aotearoa, with konbu curing, fermented fruit, yuzu koshou and dashi sitting alongside kumara, horopito and kawakawa. A dedicated vegetarian tasting menu offers its own fully composed courses rather than afterthought substitutions, and an optional beverage match is available to accompany the menus course by course. Doors open Thursday to Saturday evenings only, giving the kitchen room to build each service around produce at its peak.
The restaurant's reputation has travelled well beyond Kāpiti: 50-50 appears in the MICHELIN Guide's Restaurant Selection 2026 and the Cuisine Good Food Awards, Helen Turnbull featured in The Australian's story on New Zealand's top ten chefs, and the restaurant has appeared in The Telegraph, on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon and TVNZ's Country Calendar. To book, call 022 475 5301 or email reservations@50-50.co.nz.
On Maclean Street, a short stroll from the sand at Paraparaumu Beach, 50-50 does things its own way. This is a chef-owned tasting menu restaurant led by Helen Turnbull, who cooks for a room that is small by design. There is no à la carte. Instead, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, guests sit down to a six-course or nine-course tasting menu that changes with the seasons and with what the Kāpiti Coast's growers, fishers and foragers bring to the kitchen.
The approach is exactly as the team describes it: seasonal tasting menus celebrating local New Zealand ingredients, shaped by the producers of the region and inspired by Helen's global travels. In practice that means dishes that move comfortably between Japan, Europe and Aotearoa — konbu curing, fermented pear, yuzu koshou and hazelnut dashi alongside kumara, horopito and kawakawa.
The menu is often changing and is always current, so no two months look quite the same, but a recent edition gives a feel for it. It opens with a freshly shucked Croisilles Bay oyster dressed with beetroot, ume boshi and yuzu koshou, followed by konbu-cured kingfish with fermented pear, almond milk, miner's lettuce and a soy tuile. Lewis Farms asparagus soup arrives with horseradish cream, blood orange foam and black olive dust; kumara dumplings come with scampi, tamarind and roasted macadamia nuts.
From there the kitchen builds towards Canterbury Valley duck breast with grilled broccolini and a vadouvan spiced parsley sauce, pan-fried Whitianga snapper with carrot terrine and hazelnut dashi, and Conscious Valley braised lamb shoulder with charred savoy cabbage, horopito and a black garlic jus. Desserts hold their own: a rhubarb souffle with cultured ice cream and rose pickled ginger, then chocolate and kawakawa with date caramel and yuzu salt. The six-course menu follows a similar arc in fewer courses, and there is a full vegetarian tasting menu with its own dishes — edamame panna cotta, konbu-cured kohlrabi, tempura oyster mushroom and pressed quinoa and black bean — rather than afterthought substitutions.
Word has travelled well beyond Kāpiti. 50-50 appears in the MICHELIN Guide's Restaurant Selection 2026 and features in the Cuisine Good Food Awards. The Australian newspaper included Helen Turnbull in a feature on New Zealand's top ten chefs, and The Telegraph pointed travellers to the restaurant when writing about a New Zealand dining scene built on sustainability and respect for the local. Closer to home, Helen joined Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon to talk about her inventive use of indigenous ingredients, the restaurant appeared on TVNZ's Country Calendar in a story about foraging wild plants for restaurants, and The Post traced exactly where the kitchen's yuzu comes from — a good illustration of how far the team will go for an ingredient.
Guests describe an evening at 50-50 as a journey. One diner, who won a voucher through a Te Omanga Hospice event, wrote that the food "looks refined and simple but the flavours were rich and deep," and praised the small, stylish restaurant's young servers as professional and charming. Courses arrive at an unhurried pace, and an optional beverage match is designed to accompany the menu course by course. It is a dining room suited to celebrations, slow evenings and anyone who would rather be surprised than choose.
50-50 opens Thursday to Saturday from 5.00pm to 10.00pm at 22 Maclean Street, Paraparaumu Beach. Because it is a small room trading only three nights a week, booking ahead is strongly advised — you can reserve through the website, by phone on 022 475 5301, or by emailing reservations@50-50.co.nz. If you are vegetarian, the dedicated tasting menu is a proper, fully realised alternative worth requesting when you book. And do skim the current menu before you go: part of the pleasure is seeing which Kāpiti ingredients have made their way onto the plate this season.