Off the beaten track

For 13 years, Jeremy Rameka has been quietly building up a gastronomic heavyweight on Napier’s Marine Parade. Huddling in the shadow of the Six Sisters, the iconic row of two-storey villas beloved of Instagram influencers, Pacifica sits inside a weathered bright-blue bungalow.

It’s an avowedly Kiwi setting for a restaurant that arose out of Rameka’s frustration with a national food identity he considered derivative and, well, a bit boring. Of Tuwharetoa and Ngapuhi descent, Rameka grew up