change

Home 

Choose your country

or
West Coast
Select Peter Gordon - Food ExpertSelect Michael Cooper - Wine ExpertSelect Ruud Kleinpaste - Nature Expert
Home  ›

Other Destinations
Select a travel guide ›
 

FAST FACT:

The best way to eat whitebait is in a fritter made without flour. Take one egg yolk and mix it with half a cup of whitebait. Whip up three egg whites with 3 pinches of salt and fold through the whitebait mix. Fry quickly in butter on each side for a fluffy fritter where you can really taste the whitebait.

Peter Gordon - Food Expert

The West Coast region is a spectacularly wild part of the country with a dramatic coastline where mountains scream up at you on one side of the road and the sea pounds the rocks on the other.

Small towns are dotted down its coastline and two food events bring the whole area together: the Wild Foods Festival in March and the start of the whitebait season in spring.

Wild Foods Festival

  Hokitika Wildfood Festival - click for more.
Hokitika Wildfoods Festival is a Major Category Winner in the 2003 New Zealand Tourism Awards
More about this image
One event that's top of my list of must-sees is the Wild Foods Festival which attracts thousands of visitors to Hokitika each year. Here the emphasis is on quirky, tasty or healthy wild foods, from possum to snails to the local huhu grub. People dress up in costume, there's loads of entertainment and a real West Coast party atmosphere.

Whitebait

There are only three places in the world where you can get whitebait; Patagonia in South America, Tasmania in Australia and of course New Zealand, which is the main source. These tiny translucent fish are absolutely delicious, one of my favourite ingredients in the world. They are about the thickness of a knitting needle and about six centimetres long and are scooped out of rivers all over the West Coast.

Destinations

Pancake Rocks and Blowholes - click for more.
Punakaiki (Pancake) Rocks in the Paparoa National Park on the South Island’s West Coast.
More about this image
A really beautiful part of the West Coast is Punakaiki, about 40km north of the region's main town, Greymouth. Here, huge stacks of pancake shaped rocks have been formed by the sea with blowholes shooting water out of the ocean. Across the road from the pancake rocks walk is the Wild Coast café which friends, who recently visited, said featured simple but delicious casual dining.

West Coast

Food Events

  • Hokitika Wildfoods Festival (Mar)
Next DestinationNext page by this guide
Front Row Rugby Club

Front Row Rugby Club Join the Front Row Rugby Club along with Tana Umaga and thousands of others.

New Zealand Videos

New Zealand Videos Browse our collection of videos that showcase what New Zealand has to offer.

Your Words

Your Words Browse personal blogs for straight talking thoughts and opinions about our places, people and adventures.


› Email this page  
› Page top

Tools:

Souvenirs:

Your Experiences:

100% Pure - newzealand.com
Edition: 
Travel:
Our other sites: 

100% Pure New Zealand on: 
The email addresses published on this web page are for conducting communications that promote Tourism in New Zealand, and are not to be used for any other commercial purpose.
Copyright 1999-2009 Tourism New Zealand, the official website of the New Zealand Tourism Board.