It's been a couple of years since I've written a country-wide post about food so I think it's about time. The last trip that yielded one of these was Japan in 2017 and honestly the places we've been since then were either uninspiring from a food standpoint; repeats of past trips; or filled with not quite enough awesome eats to fill a whole post. New Zealand broke that mold.
Not familiar with New Zealand food? Neither was I. I quite frankly wouldn't have been able to intelligently articulate anything about food from that country more than maybe six months ago. But some advance research, some paying attention along the way and refusing to back down from anything that sounds like I've never heard of it before got me some interesting meals and snacks. So here are a few words about food and drink from our latest excursion. OK, maybe more than a FEW. And the drink is not what you think, I'm guessing.
Porridge
I'm starting with breakfast, I guess. If the above picture isn't the prettiest bowl of porridge you've ever seen, then you didn't grow up in England in the 1970s eating Ready Brek.
At its most basic level, porridge is ground starch or grains of some sort mixed with milk or water. Before New Zealand my experience with the stuff was limited to instant oat cereal made with hot milk and maybe a dollop of jam on top for some flavor other than the standard sugar that could be sprinkled all over the top to sweeten it up a little. The kiwis are taking this stuff to a whole new level. Polenta porridge with lime and macadamia nuts? Yes, please! Yummy!! And with a iced chocolate drink on the side. What a way to start the day.
As frou frou as this bowl sounds (edible pink flowers? really?), it was actually delicious and I would have loved more but it was honestly pretty difficult to find porridge on menus. An internet search for the stuff yielded some advice on where to head including a dedicated porridge restaurant which it appeared had closed. I mean, I might have had a craving for the stuff while we were in country but I don't see a restaurant surviving long exclusively serving this dish. If my one New Zealand bowl was the last one I have, I'm happy with my lifelong porridge experience.
The Dairy
Ever since I visited Japan, I've been curious about convenience stores all over the world. If you have no idea what I mean by this, go to Japan and spend some time in a 7-11 or FamilyMart. Tell me you can't walk out of either one of those places with like eight or ten delicious food items.
In New Zealand, the convenience store is more often known as the dairy, even though it has nothing to do with milk or cheese or anything else related to dairy production. Some of the things we found here were purposeful pilgrimages; others were accidents. I think a quick couple of sentences or so is worthwhile for each item that we found there.
I hate to keep bringing up Japan like it was one of the best trips of my life (although it was) but one of my favorite Japanese snacks are strawberry Pocky Sticks, thin sticks of cookie coated with oh so delicious faux strawberry creme. Imagine my surprise when I saw what looked to be a dead on knockoff in boxes of Lucky Stick. The cookie sticks are thicker, meaning the cookie to strawberry ratio is higher. I'm in it for the strawberry; higher cookie ratio is bad. Just one box here for me.
I cannot explain Chocolate Fish being marshmallow covered in chocolate but I'd eat these things occasionally in the U.S. if they made their way stateside. I mean who doesn't love flavored marshmallow and chocolate? If they did ever make their way to America, they'd have to lose the "as kiwi as jandals" slogan. Don't ask. I cannot explain this either.
Any hankering for dark chocolate with orange candy shells? See, you didn't even know these things existed but I got you thinking now. Jaffas were probably the hit of our dairy exploration. Dark chocolate and orange is a classic combination. Or maybe fake orange if you prefer me to be more accurate. Good stuff.
If there was a supreme disappointment in New Zealand convenience store fare, it was Pineapple Lumps. Yes, I know the name sucks. Who would really want to eat anything called "lumps"? But pineapple flavored whatever coated in chocolate? On the scale of awesomeness, how could this do anything but rate "supremely awesome"?
It wasn't. Honestly, I felt like I was chewing chemicals eating these things. Totally disgusting and totally disappointing. The most disappointing thing about New Zealand by far. I threw half of the bag away. And I really had to choke down the first half. I take notes when I travel. My notes about Pineapple Lumps read "gummy and unpleasant". And there was such possibility...
Lemon & Paeroa
Sure, I could have put this in the same section as the rest of the delicacies and disgustingness I found at the dairies but I decided not to. L&P is the only drink I'm featuring in this post and it deserves its own spot. You thought I was going to write about beer, didn't you?
I would describe Lemon & Paeroa as a cross between lemon-lime soda (although no lime really) and cream soda, but with the cream soda backed off to like 15 or 20% of cream soda-ness. Just a hint of that bite that cream soda sometimes has. I don't drink soda really ever, and certainly not non-diet soda, but I had three L&Ps when I was in New Zealand. If I could find this stuff locally, I'd buy some every now and then. I'd put it in the same soda category as Faygo Rock & Rye and Vernor's ginger ale. And yes, that's some high praise.
Pies
In New Zealand, the convenience store is more often known as the dairy, even though it has nothing to do with milk or cheese or anything else related to dairy production. Some of the things we found here were purposeful pilgrimages; others were accidents. I think a quick couple of sentences or so is worthwhile for each item that we found there.
I hate to keep bringing up Japan like it was one of the best trips of my life (although it was) but one of my favorite Japanese snacks are strawberry Pocky Sticks, thin sticks of cookie coated with oh so delicious faux strawberry creme. Imagine my surprise when I saw what looked to be a dead on knockoff in boxes of Lucky Stick. The cookie sticks are thicker, meaning the cookie to strawberry ratio is higher. I'm in it for the strawberry; higher cookie ratio is bad. Just one box here for me.
I cannot explain Chocolate Fish being marshmallow covered in chocolate but I'd eat these things occasionally in the U.S. if they made their way stateside. I mean who doesn't love flavored marshmallow and chocolate? If they did ever make their way to America, they'd have to lose the "as kiwi as jandals" slogan. Don't ask. I cannot explain this either.
Any hankering for dark chocolate with orange candy shells? See, you didn't even know these things existed but I got you thinking now. Jaffas were probably the hit of our dairy exploration. Dark chocolate and orange is a classic combination. Or maybe fake orange if you prefer me to be more accurate. Good stuff.
If there was a supreme disappointment in New Zealand convenience store fare, it was Pineapple Lumps. Yes, I know the name sucks. Who would really want to eat anything called "lumps"? But pineapple flavored whatever coated in chocolate? On the scale of awesomeness, how could this do anything but rate "supremely awesome"?
It wasn't. Honestly, I felt like I was chewing chemicals eating these things. Totally disgusting and totally disappointing. The most disappointing thing about New Zealand by far. I threw half of the bag away. And I really had to choke down the first half. I take notes when I travel. My notes about Pineapple Lumps read "gummy and unpleasant". And there was such possibility...
Lemon & Paeroa
Sure, I could have put this in the same section as the rest of the delicacies and disgustingness I found at the dairies but I decided not to. L&P is the only drink I'm featuring in this post and it deserves its own spot. You thought I was going to write about beer, didn't you?
I would describe Lemon & Paeroa as a cross between lemon-lime soda (although no lime really) and cream soda, but with the cream soda backed off to like 15 or 20% of cream soda-ness. Just a hint of that bite that cream soda sometimes has. I don't drink soda really ever, and certainly not non-diet soda, but I had three L&Ps when I was in New Zealand. If I could find this stuff locally, I'd buy some every now and then. I'd put it in the same soda category as Faygo Rock & Rye and Vernor's ginger ale. And yes, that's some high praise.
Pies
If there's a kiwi food that deserves a special place in the food of the world pantheon, it's New Zealand's hand pies, mobile hot pockets of savory deliciousness. Now, this is not the first time I've written about the joy of pies. I had plenty of steak and ale and chicken and mushroom and every other kind of pie in England in 2014 and 2016 (even if I didn't write about it that last year). But whereas you need a knife and fork and plate and plenty of gravy and some time to digest what you've eaten in a pub in Britain, New Zealand's pies are an on the go food.
How's that work, you might ask? Well, folks that make these things have made the insides solid enough (yet still moist) so that you can bite into them without the whole filling (or even a part of it) dripping out and onto the floor, sidewalk or, worse still, you. Does that inhibit the flavor? Not as far as I can tell. At least two of the pies I ate in New Zealand were some of the finest bites I had on this trip.
These things are pretty much everywhere. We found them in supermarkets just waiting to be taken away and eaten (I did), in dairies ready for a quick meal while walking to wherever you are going (we didn't do this), in dedicated pie shops (so good...) and in honest to goodness full blown restaurants. The variety is astonishing but they are generally flavored in the British style but lighter, meaning beef and chicken with mushrooms and even butter chicken (albeit the kiwis somehow dump a ton of sugar in their butter chicken; not sure why) but without all the artery clogging fat or suet in the crust. Or at least I like to think so anyway.
The other great benefit of New Zealand pies? The smaller size means they are cheaper. The best pie I had during our two weeks in country cost me just $4.90. That's $4.90 New Zealand dollars, meaning about $3.25 U.S. These are the one food I miss on a weekly basis since we got back. Someone in the Washington, D.C. area needs to open a New Zealand pie shop and quick!
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| Mince and cheese pie in Rotorua. Almost gone and no mess. Genius!! |
The other great benefit of New Zealand pies? The smaller size means they are cheaper. The best pie I had during our two weeks in country cost me just $4.90. That's $4.90 New Zealand dollars, meaning about $3.25 U.S. These are the one food I miss on a weekly basis since we got back. Someone in the Washington, D.C. area needs to open a New Zealand pie shop and quick!
Hokey Pokey Ice Cream
I don't normally eat ice cream when I travel. Not that I don't like it or anything; it's just not part of my regular diet. True, I spent pretty much all of my time in Italy four years ago looking for gelato, but never since.
Until New Zealand. I knew about hokey pokey ice cream before we landed in New Zealand and pretty much the first time I saw an ice cream stand the day we got there I was over at the counter checking to see if they had some. They didn't. But we found some on day two in country after a tramp to the top of One Tree Hill. There's a creamery at the bottom of the hill, in case you are interested.
Hokey pokey ice cream is vanilla ice cream with small pieces of honeycomb toffee to provide some crunch (and which WILL get stuck in your teeth) and some extra flavor when you are working your way through a cone or bowl of plain vanilla. It's apparently the number two selling flavor of ice cream in New Zealand after (you guessed it) vanilla. It's a rite of passage to get some I guess. I settled for one bowl while I was over there, although we did get some on the airplane ride home across the Pacific.
Fun facts: hokey pokey was apparently a slang term for ice cream sold by street vendors in New York City during the 19th century. It's also the generic term for anything honeycomb in New Zealand. My beloved Crunchie candy bars that I get every time I go to England are also available in New Zealand but instead of the wrapper advertising honeycomb covered in chocolate, it's hokey pokey covered in chocolate.
Until New Zealand. I knew about hokey pokey ice cream before we landed in New Zealand and pretty much the first time I saw an ice cream stand the day we got there I was over at the counter checking to see if they had some. They didn't. But we found some on day two in country after a tramp to the top of One Tree Hill. There's a creamery at the bottom of the hill, in case you are interested.
Hokey pokey ice cream is vanilla ice cream with small pieces of honeycomb toffee to provide some crunch (and which WILL get stuck in your teeth) and some extra flavor when you are working your way through a cone or bowl of plain vanilla. It's apparently the number two selling flavor of ice cream in New Zealand after (you guessed it) vanilla. It's a rite of passage to get some I guess. I settled for one bowl while I was over there, although we did get some on the airplane ride home across the Pacific.
Fun facts: hokey pokey was apparently a slang term for ice cream sold by street vendors in New York City during the 19th century. It's also the generic term for anything honeycomb in New Zealand. My beloved Crunchie candy bars that I get every time I go to England are also available in New Zealand but instead of the wrapper advertising honeycomb covered in chocolate, it's hokey pokey covered in chocolate.
Pavlova
So after working your way through Chocolate Fish, a box of Lucky Stick, maybe some hokey pokey ice cream and some Jaffas but definitely no Pineapple Lumps, are you finally done with the sugar in New Zealand? Not until you've had some pavlova, you aren't.
Pavlova was invented either in New Zealand or Australia (yes, there's a debate about this) to celebrate a visit by the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova to the two countries in the late 1920's. It's pretty much completely made out of meringue and whipped cream with a little fruit scattered on top or around the sides (to make it seem healthy I guess?). The trick with this dessert is getting the ingredients and the bake right to have the meringue crisp on the outside and the cooked to the texture of marshmallow on the inside. The whipped cream can then be piled on top to complete the effort.
This stuff is pretty darned good. I'll take this over a trip to the dairy or some almost vanilla ice cream any day. Plus the fruit makes it healthy, right?
Pavlova was invented either in New Zealand or Australia (yes, there's a debate about this) to celebrate a visit by the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova to the two countries in the late 1920's. It's pretty much completely made out of meringue and whipped cream with a little fruit scattered on top or around the sides (to make it seem healthy I guess?). The trick with this dessert is getting the ingredients and the bake right to have the meringue crisp on the outside and the cooked to the texture of marshmallow on the inside. The whipped cream can then be piled on top to complete the effort.
This stuff is pretty darned good. I'll take this over a trip to the dairy or some almost vanilla ice cream any day. Plus the fruit makes it healthy, right?
Muttonbird and Paua
No trip to a foreign country would be complete without at least a little bit of adventurousness at the breakfast, lunch or dinner table. If there's something I've never heard of or a vegetable or animal I have heard of but have never seen on a menu, I'm mostly all in. I've tried springbok in Zimbabwe, guinea pig in Ecuador, runny and mold-covered cheese in Paris and who knows what it was I ate in Marrakech. In New Zealand, it was muttonbird and paua. Not together.
So I get that neither of these dishes was particularly out there on the strangeness scale but you have to work with what you are given. Muttonbird is the name given to the meat of the sooty shearwater seabirds that make their home on the islands around New Zealand. The meat apparently tasted to someone like mutton and hence the name. If you find some on a menu like we did way down on Stewart Island, give it a try but know that the bird has been harvested as a baby from the nest while its parents are off fishing for food for the day. Nice, right? The meat is dark with a deep flavor of red meat, albeit it a little dry like most wild meat tends to be. This is a truly New Zealand dish; I'm not sure you are getting young sooty shearwaters on too many menus outside the country. The image above is a plate of muttonbird artfully arranged with some side vegetables.
Paua, on the other hand, is a type of mollusk. If you remotely play tourist in New Zealand, you will find the iridescent shells of the paua for sale in pretty much every city you visit. Paua is a Māori word for the giant sea snails that live close to the shore of the country; in other places in the world, they might be called abalone, if that means anything to you. I had my one plate of paua in a restaurant in Wellington the first night we were in that city. I am not sure the dish I had was representative of the general quality of this meat; if it is, I can't imaging a lot of people would eat it all that often. I'd characterize its texture as rubbery, not unlike poorly cooked squid. I'd take muttonbird over paua, but I'm not really hankering for either as I write this.
So that's my food report on New Zealand. No it's not the culinary wonderland that is Japan, but there's enough here worth seeking out even if it's just a pie washed down with an L&P and finished with a big plate of pavlova.
The cover picture of this post is me downing a colossal cream and caramel donut at the Thursday Night Market in Rotorua. While the food there is not particularly New Zealand specific, the atmosphere, the choice of dishes and the prices made Thursday night in the Māori capital of the country one of the more enjoyable food experiences we had while we were over there. I'd recommend scheduling a Rotorua trip around Thursday night just for this market.
So I get that neither of these dishes was particularly out there on the strangeness scale but you have to work with what you are given. Muttonbird is the name given to the meat of the sooty shearwater seabirds that make their home on the islands around New Zealand. The meat apparently tasted to someone like mutton and hence the name. If you find some on a menu like we did way down on Stewart Island, give it a try but know that the bird has been harvested as a baby from the nest while its parents are off fishing for food for the day. Nice, right? The meat is dark with a deep flavor of red meat, albeit it a little dry like most wild meat tends to be. This is a truly New Zealand dish; I'm not sure you are getting young sooty shearwaters on too many menus outside the country. The image above is a plate of muttonbird artfully arranged with some side vegetables.
Paua, on the other hand, is a type of mollusk. If you remotely play tourist in New Zealand, you will find the iridescent shells of the paua for sale in pretty much every city you visit. Paua is a Māori word for the giant sea snails that live close to the shore of the country; in other places in the world, they might be called abalone, if that means anything to you. I had my one plate of paua in a restaurant in Wellington the first night we were in that city. I am not sure the dish I had was representative of the general quality of this meat; if it is, I can't imaging a lot of people would eat it all that often. I'd characterize its texture as rubbery, not unlike poorly cooked squid. I'd take muttonbird over paua, but I'm not really hankering for either as I write this.
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| A dish of paua with clams. The paua are the mushroom looking things. If only they WERE mushrooms... |
The cover picture of this post is me downing a colossal cream and caramel donut at the Thursday Night Market in Rotorua. While the food there is not particularly New Zealand specific, the atmosphere, the choice of dishes and the prices made Thursday night in the Māori capital of the country one of the more enjoyable food experiences we had while we were over there. I'd recommend scheduling a Rotorua trip around Thursday night just for this market.
How We Did It
I am fairly sure that if you visit New Zealand you can find some of the kiwi delicacies in this post with just a little searching, if you even have to exert that much effort. Although maybe not the muttonbird. In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, however, we felt the following places served us outstanding food while we were in country and we would recommend you seek these places out if you are in the neighborhood and have a hankering.
If you are in Rotorua and you want a great pie, head over to Gold Star Bakery at 89 Old Taupo Road. These were definitely the best pies we had in our two weeks in New Zealand. And at just $4.90 NZ, they were also the cheapest. I can highly recommend the Mince & Cheese. If I lived or worked in Rotorua, I'd eat here a lot. Like four or five days a week.
The only other pie spot I'd recommend (and I know this is a total curveball) is the food counter at the Invercargill Airport. I know it sounds really weird to have airport food endorsed but the chicken, mushroom and leek pie was amazing. And don't worry about which food counter at the airport I'm talking about; there's only one. Just like there's only one door to the runway.
If you want the prettiest bowl of porridge ever shown above, make your way to Chuffed Coffee at 43 High Street in Auckland. There's only one porridge option offered there and I can't speak to the rest of the menu (because we both got the porridge) but that dish was pretty darned good. I'd definitely eat it again even with the bananas which are not by any means my favorite fruit (in fact I pretty much avoid them everywhere...except in Ecuador).
Seeking some good pavlova? We got some at the South Sea Hotel on Stewart Island and took the picture in this post above. We might have more pavlova recommendations (because honestly who doesn't like meringue and whipped cream making up 90% of their dessert) if we could have found it more often. The picture above represents exactly half of the pavlova we ate. I definitely would have tried more if it was available where we ate.
Finally, because I know it's probably not going to be on most menus in New Zealand, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to our hotel, the Church Hill Lodge, for serving mutton bird on their menu. This is the only place we found this dish. If you are in Stewart Island, I'd recommend a meal here, especially because there are like three places to eat dinner on the entire island. Make a reservation.
And if it didn't sink in the first time. if you are ever in Rotorua, go to Gold Star Bakery. You will not regret it. Will not.
I am fairly sure that if you visit New Zealand you can find some of the kiwi delicacies in this post with just a little searching, if you even have to exert that much effort. Although maybe not the muttonbird. In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, however, we felt the following places served us outstanding food while we were in country and we would recommend you seek these places out if you are in the neighborhood and have a hankering.
If you are in Rotorua and you want a great pie, head over to Gold Star Bakery at 89 Old Taupo Road. These were definitely the best pies we had in our two weeks in New Zealand. And at just $4.90 NZ, they were also the cheapest. I can highly recommend the Mince & Cheese. If I lived or worked in Rotorua, I'd eat here a lot. Like four or five days a week.
The only other pie spot I'd recommend (and I know this is a total curveball) is the food counter at the Invercargill Airport. I know it sounds really weird to have airport food endorsed but the chicken, mushroom and leek pie was amazing. And don't worry about which food counter at the airport I'm talking about; there's only one. Just like there's only one door to the runway.
If you want the prettiest bowl of porridge ever shown above, make your way to Chuffed Coffee at 43 High Street in Auckland. There's only one porridge option offered there and I can't speak to the rest of the menu (because we both got the porridge) but that dish was pretty darned good. I'd definitely eat it again even with the bananas which are not by any means my favorite fruit (in fact I pretty much avoid them everywhere...except in Ecuador).
Seeking some good pavlova? We got some at the South Sea Hotel on Stewart Island and took the picture in this post above. We might have more pavlova recommendations (because honestly who doesn't like meringue and whipped cream making up 90% of their dessert) if we could have found it more often. The picture above represents exactly half of the pavlova we ate. I definitely would have tried more if it was available where we ate.
Finally, because I know it's probably not going to be on most menus in New Zealand, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to our hotel, the Church Hill Lodge, for serving mutton bird on their menu. This is the only place we found this dish. If you are in Stewart Island, I'd recommend a meal here, especially because there are like three places to eat dinner on the entire island. Make a reservation.
And if it didn't sink in the first time. if you are ever in Rotorua, go to Gold Star Bakery. You will not regret it. Will not.
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