Filipino chef Jess Granada's Nanam earns the first Cuisine hat for a Takapuna restaurant

Channel Magazine's October issue profiles chef Jess Granada of Nanam on Hurstmere Road, whose modern Filipino-Spanish restaurant scored 17 for its first Cuisine hat, the first awarded to a Takapuna restaurant.

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Nanam, the modern Filipino-Spanish restaurant on Hurstmere Road in Takapuna, has been awarded its first Cuisine hat, according to a profile in Channel Magazine's October 2026 issue. The magazine reported that Nanam scored 17 and that it is the first hat awarded to a Takapuna restaurant.

Chef Jess Granada grew up in Antique, in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines. Channel Magazine reported that eleven years ago she sold taco pao for six dollars from a night market stall of about four square metres, before opening a small eatery in Royal Oak and then, more than a decade after the first stall, the Takapuna restaurant.

"For a long time, people would come in, look at the menu, and ask what adobo was," business partner and co-owner Andrew Soriano told the magazine. "You would explain it, and then they would order the steak." The menu includes slow-roasted pork lechon, lumpia, croquetas, crispy duck, sizzling sisig with octopus, and wagyu beef and lemongrass tacos.

Channel Magazine reported that Granada was also named in Cuisine's Top 50 Women in Food and Drink for 2026, and that she won the Australasian Tapas Championship, which took her to the World Tapas Competition in Valladolid, Spain, representing New Zealand. The restaurant's private dining room is built around a single long table seating thirty, and its set feast is designed for groups of four to thirty.

Nanam is at 178 Hurstmere Road, Takapuna. Its website lists dinner from Tuesday to Saturday, 5pm to 10pm, and lunch on Friday and Saturday, 11.30am to 2.30pm, and it is closed on Sundays and Mondays.