Tala wins Michelin star: How Henry Onesemo put Samoan cuisine on the map

Wednesday, 1 July 2026

This story was originally published on May 17 and is republished now following the Michelin Guide awards on Tuesday which saw chef Henry Onesemo’s restaurant Tala awarded a Michelin star - the first ever for a Samoan restaurant.

As a child, Henry Onesemo dreaded cooking. The time, ritual, rules – all essential to his craft now – were burdens for a free-spirited child growing up in Samoa as the middle of five boys. “It was such a chore,” he laughs. “On Sundays, you had to wake up at 4am to start the umu [Samoan earth oven], prepare the taro, the breadfruit, the things that need time to sit before you prepare it again.” The umu had to be timed perfectly, “because you can’t have the smoke at a certain time, or you get fined from the church”.

It taught him discipline, “but I hated cooking”, he says. “It wasn’t until I got to the States and was missing home that I was trying to recreate Samoan food using whatever was around me. That’s when cooking started becoming a creative outlet.”

The younger version of Onesemo would probably be surprised to find where he is now at 44 – running Tala, the Parnell establishment billed as “the world’s only Samoan fine dining restaurant”. Tala, Samoan for “story” or “tale”, has won a steady stream of awards since its opening in 2023, and in March was selected by Time magazine for its annual list of the World’s Greatest Places – the only restaurant in all of Oceania to appear on the list. It’s an achievement Onesemo refuses to take sole responsibility for. “It’s great for Auckland, it’s amazing for Samoan food and it’s good for the team as well. They deserve it.”

With a permanent smile and self-deprecating humour, Onesemo bats away praise in a softly American lilt, an accent blending his childhood with the many years of his adult life spent in the US. I’m sitting with him in Tala on a weekday morning, the kitchen behind him a hub of activity as his team prepares for the night’s service. It’s a small space with just a few dining spots, essential to preserve the restaurant’s feeling of familial intimacy that Onesemo brings from Samoan culinary traditions. From the restaurant’s fale talimalo (place to receive guests) to the ‘apa fafano (hand-washing ritual), everything is imbued with Onesemo’s love for, and memories of, the country where his family still lives.

Born in American Samoa, thus the only member of his family with a US passport, Onesemo spent the majority of his upbringing in Samoa, a childhood he treasured. “I never knew I was poor until I moved to the States, where poor was defined literally,” he says. “Growing up in Samoa, even at the worst of times, it never felt like we were [poor], we had it great.” Life was “so much fun … when it rains, you’re out all day in the rain, you shower off spouts from the roofs, get tarp and make slides, things like that”.

Onesemo failed high school; he jests that as the middle child, “nobody helped me with my homework”. At his father’s encouragement, he looked into the military, but a high school diploma was needed. Moving to Hawaii on his American passport to get qualified, Onesemo was then accepted into the Hawaii Air National Guard, which took him to places like Texas, Arizona and Tennessee.

“During 9/11, we never got deployed – the most that we were deployed was to Arizona to feel out what the desert is like, putting on the chemical gear, trying to feel what it’s like working in that environment.”

Pay was low, so Onesemo began working at a nearby resort in Hawaii named Paradise Cove, starting as a security guard, then a luau dancer. He then caught wind that Disney was holding auditions locally for dancers at Walt Disney World in Orlando. “It was just me and another guy that got the roles,” he says, “and they relocated me to Florida.”

Florida was where his experience in kitchens began. Like the air force, the Disney salary alone wasn’t enough to live on, so he found work in an Italian restaurant. It was through mutual friends in Orlando that he met his now wife Debby, who was working as a lawyer and now covers the business side of running Tala. “She pulls the strings in here, you know,” says Onesemo. “I get the shine because it’s a Samoan restaurant, but Tala would be shut in a couple weeks if she’s not around.”

The pair, who have now been together around 15 years, moved to Samoa from Florida after Debby’s contract at a law firm finished. While living there for eight months, they visited Auckland to watch Bruno Mars – with whom they have a mutual friend – and dined at Merediths, the award-winning restaurant from Samoan-born chef Michael Meredith (who now runs Mr Morris and Metita). Seeing a Samoan man in charge of a fine-dining establishment changed the trajectory of Onesemo’s life yet again.

“This is before Instagram, any social media,” he says. “I literally had to see the person to get inspired.”

Upon returning to Samoa, Onesemo wrote Meredith a letter asking if he could stage (pronounced sta-zhjer, from the French word stagiaire, meaning a short-term, unpaid culinary internship) in his kitchen.

“[Staging] was big back in the day, so I worked for free for three months for Michael Meredith,” says Onesemo. He began to imagine his own establishment. “I was inspired by a Samoan chef doing that kind of food, and I thought, ‘one day I’ll open a Samoan restaurant that will have this kind of feel’. That is 12 years ago today.”

A job offer from Meredith immediately followed, and the Onesemos were suddenly living in Auckland. Onesemo went on to work with Meredith for the social enterprise Eat My Lunch, as well as kitchens around New Zealand, and another stage in Thailand. It was while he was preparing his visa to travel to Thailand that he asked Debby to marry him. Working in the kitchen at the ibis hotel in Rotorua, he kept accidentally ticking ‘married’, and having to reprint the visa forms due to his mistake.

“I ended up just saying, ‘By the way, I think we should just get married’.”

As he built up his kitchen experience, his vision of Tala became nearer and clearer. “Something we were very intentional about in the beginning was not to call it a ‘Pacific’ restaurant. It’s a Samoan restaurant,” he says. “It’s about being specific, instead of generically Pacific.” He compares it to how South American cuisines are often lumped together, but have their own distinct culinary identities.

“In Samoa we have oka, which is a raw seafood dish,” he says. “It’s similar to Fijian kokoda, similar to ika mata [from the Cook Islands], but it’s completely different. When you lob us all together and call it the same, we lose a little bit of that identity.”

Having observed his development as a chef over the last 12 years, Meredith admires Onesemo’s dedication to his vision. “Henry has always believed deeply in creating something that truly represents Samoa and its stories,” says Meredith. “He has continued to refine and strengthen that vision, learning through the process while staying committed to his identity. What stands out most is the belief he has carried in himself and in his vision - supported every step of the way by his wife, Debby.”

Tala’s menu is inspired directly by Onesemo’s own childhood; a starter of pineapple coated in delectable cumin, chilli and salt, is an elevated version of the tradition of dipping fruit in Raro powder as a child. Pisupo, or canned corn beef, is a staple of the Samoan diet, stemming from when the Germans occupied Samoa and began importing canned goods. Onesemo has transformed this into a beautiful beef tartare dish that echoes those beloved flavours.

For Onesemo, it’s also about being too insecure to claim Tala as pan-Pacific. “I know for a fact I am not good enough to cook Fijian food, I’m not good enough to cook Tongan food,” he says. “From that perspective, I’d be riddled with imposter syndrome.”

He hopes the success of Tala carves a path for Pacific Island cuisine, globally and locally. “I want to see a Tongan restaurant, a Rarotongan restaurant,” he says, “to see a lot more specificity when it comes to Pacific food.”

His insecurity is something he’s learning to manage. “With the restaurant, I’m pretty sure everyone sees the recognition and the awards and things like that,” he says. “But my innate nature is to look at what’s wrong with it, so I can fix it and make it better. It helps me be a good chef and be a better business owner, I guess, but some of it is very fear-based. If you put me in any room, everyone that I’ve surrounded myself with has a higher education than me, so that already plays on my insecurity as well.”

Onesemo was in Samoa for Easter, but the last time his family were all back together was 2024, for his father’s funeral. “Once I moved to New Zealand, I didn’t go home for 10 years,” he says. “After my dad’s funeral, I thought I need to make a more conscious effort about going home, because you never know how long Mum’s gonna be around, you know?”

His dad never got to see Tala, but he and Debby are working on bringing his mum to Aotearoa. Dad was always very proud, says Onesemo, but Mum was slightly harder to crack. “She’s always quick to remind me, ‘Just remember, that’s not your success. It belongs to God, not you’,” he says. She reminds him to keep the restaurant focused on community. “She puts everything in perspective. What use is a restaurant with a lot of awards if it’s not serving anybody?”

The last thing Onesemo could be accused of is a big ego. For him, it’s about giving back to the city that has welcomed him and Debby. “Auckland has changed so much as a city,” he says. “It’s a lot more accepting to an outsider, somebody like me opening a Samoan restaurant, and to give it a chance.”

Though they’re grateful for the Time recognition, personal success has never been Onesemo’s goal. “It’s my job to push Samoan food forward,” he says. “Help Auckland be recognised as one of the food destinations that it should be, because Auckland has given me so much. I need to give something back.”