One of my favorite things about food in New Zealand is the lamb! Not only is it good, but they have it frequently. It's their standard everyday meat, which is awesome to the visiting Americans who usually only have it for Easter and Dad's birthday. It's funny-they consider lamb to be such a usual thing that whenever kiwis entertain, they serve another meat. It led to an awful situation last time we visited where, because we were guests, we were actually fed ham over and over again. I'm not a ham fan to begin with, so getting ham when I expected lamb was crushing. This time though, the hints were dropped (not at all subtly) that we wanted lamb, and lots of it! Legs, chops, we got it all. It was amazing. One meal was TWO roasted legs of lamb. I was so happy.
Another thing we always eat way too much of in NZ is fish and chips. Now, this isn't Captain Ds or some restaurant frying up a piece of fish they couldn't sell any other way. This is real, wonderful fish fillets (of all kinds) and hot, fresh chips (fries) and sometimes even oysters! And it's all wrapped in the classic newspaper, sometimes even tied with twine. I had at least four fish and chips meals.
The seafood overall deserves mention. There was tons of it, and it was fresh and amazing. Particularly awesome were the bluff oysters, which are from southern NZ and are totally amazing. We had them fried a few times, but the real deliciousness was having them raw, dipped in pepper-laden malt vinegar. Unbelievable.
Another interesting side note on food-they eat something called kumura, often as kumura chips- it looks like a sweet potato on the outside, is a bit darker than a regular potato on the inside, and tastes kind of like yucca. It's actually very good! I don't remember seeing it on my previous trips...
Last food: fried, meat-filled pastries of goodness and heart attacks. We're talking mince pies, sausage rolls, and all other manners of fried things. They are absolutely one of my traveling trash eats! I think we grossed out my NZ family by actually eating that kind of stuff...Kiwis in general are a really health conscious people, and don't usually eat such crap.
On to beverages! I won't lie, I focused on the alcohol, but first, there are a few non-alcoholic ones that need mentioning. The first is classic-their lemonade. It is not like ours, all actual lemon and sugar. Theirs is carbonated and clear to very light yellow. It's maybe more what we would think of as a lemon Italian soda or a Sprite even, but not as sweet-just really good and refreshing. And one drink we had on this trip that I didn't remember was Lemon&Paeroa- an awesome lemon drink sort of based on their lemonade.
Alright. So I will preface this next part by saying that I was sent to New Zealand with the mission of assessing the beer situation. This all started when my Mom and I asked my Dad one day about the beer in New Zealand and what it was like. When he couldn't answer (beyond the fantatsically helpful "it's just beer, it's like beer") we gave him choices--were there stouts, wheat beers, light beers, all kinds? He still looked confused, so we went to brands. Which one did he stop us on? Bud Light. So NZ beer is like Bud Light. Ok. It might be good to know that my dad will only drink really crappy beer, and only in a can-he's a real fan of Natty Light and Coors Light-but still. Could he be right? I told some friends and was told to check it out, and that if that was the case, we were opening up a microbrewery in NZ ASAP. So, while on this trip, I tried as many beers as I could. Here's the list as far as I can remember:
Tui (named after a bird, has absolutely hilarious billboards-google image Tui beer ads-they have three books of these bilboards. I read through one and laughed the whole night).
Mac's Golden Lager
Mac's Coudy Wheat
Mac's Sassy Red
____ Armageddon IPA
Canterbury Draught
Monteith's Radler
Pilsener from Sewell's Brewery(?)
Speight's
And I know there were others...
The verdict? I was actually disappointed. By far the most interesting was the Radler, and it was the first one I had, so I was excited. It was really light in color but had one of the most complex flavors I've ever had. Awesome. The others were mainly just bland! Several relatives (and future relatives-Trent!) gave me beer tastings, which was awesome. I was at one point warned that my next one was a really strong beer that I might not like (one of the IPAs-Tui maybe) and it was really nothing at all. They told me that there are a lot of microbreweries (they call them boutique breweries) down there now, so maybe some of those would be more interesting. I do wonder if maybe US beer has a lot more sugar, preservatives, etc, in it and so has more flavor? Don't know. It was definitely fun to try all the beers though. And, knowing that NZ is big into wine now, I made some room in my schedule for that! I mostly had sauvignon blanc, and it was excellent.
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