New Zealand's Culinary Culture
A flavourful mix of culinary innovation and cultural diversity has earned New Zealand its reputation as a fine food destination for discerning gourmets.
While food and beverage production has long been the lynchpin of New Zealand’s prosperity and a leading export earner, it’s the fusion of unique, quality produce and ethnic influences that have allowed a national food identity to evolve. Now the worldwide reputation for award winning produce and specialist chefs is drawing tourists to the source and food tourism within New Zealand is developing at a rapid rate.
Food Events
National and regional events highlight the production of a wide-ranging supply of gourmet foods and boutique wines. Seasonal festivals, regular farmers’ markets and country fairs showcase fresh and flavourful produce and are favourite destinations for locals and tourists. Indigenous foods are becoming more of a feature on restaurant menus and traditional Maori cuisine is experiencing a contemporary twist at the hands of innovative cooks like Rotorua-based Maori chef Charles Royal.
Organics
A growing awareness of organics, food origin and healthy choices is driving a move towards locally produced goods and today there is less focus on prolific production and more on quality, refinement and originality. Innovative chefs make clever use of tasty ingredients freshly harvested from the garden, land and sea. Accompanied by award winning wines the New Zealand gastronomic experience is amongst the best in the world.
Kiwi Home Cooking
As well as an extensive list of fine restaurants, specialist food outlets and cafes, there’s also a growing trend towards private dining which provides tourists with an authentic home cooking experience. Many lodges, boutique hotels and bed and breakfast establishments offer guests the chance to design their own menu, gather ingredients and invite guests to a meal prepared by a specially selected chef.
Changing Habits
The style of eating in New Zealand has changed almost as much as the food itself. Most New Zealanders still prefer a relaxed and unaffected eating environment in-keeping with the laid back Kiwi psyche. Summer usually means endless barbecues and alfresco dining where the emphasis is on fresh and simple fare. But rather than the traditional sausage and chop with tomato sauce and white bread, today’s "Barbie" menu is more likely to include shellfish and quality cuts of meat adorned with gourmet sauces, herbs and spices, exotic salads and specialist vegetables and fruits.
Always Fresh
Availability of fresh produce is excellent throughout New Zealand and there’s a revival of vegetable gardening with even apartment dwellers choosing to grow their own gourmet herbs and salad ingredients; An awareness of place of origin and self sufficiency has turned thinking Kiwis into label-reading, ingredient-aware healthy eaters. Some large fast food chains are finding it increasingly difficult to attract custom in a society where up-market cafes are replacing burger bars and fresh juice bars can be found in every shopping mall. Many New Zealanders now do their main weekly shop at their local farmers’ market making the most of reasonably priced seasonal produce, home made preserves and baking and an array of exotic ingredients inspired by cultural diversity.
History
The New Zealand gourmet experience is a relatively recent one - less than 30 years ago "meat and three veg" was the staple diet. Eating out was a limited experience mostly involving straightforward fodder such as steak and chips, fish and chips, baked meats and pies - a culture which stemmed from the British colonial heritage.
Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, Maori food or kai was always based around the land. Maori were great hunters and gatherers and lived on birds and fish cooked with wild herbs and roots. In the late eighteenth century the first European settlers brought with them foods like potatoes, pumpkin, wheat and sugar which were quickly adopted by Maori who had long been plagued by food shortages.
The British influence on New Zealand cuisine continued throughout the twentieth century. It wasn't until the 1960s when affordable air travel allowed New Zealanders to travel overseas more freely thereby exposing them to the delights of foreign food. Once they discovered French, Italian, Indian and Chinese cuisine, travellers returned home demanding better quality food and more variety. This was further fuelled by the liberalisation of immigration laws in the 1980s allowing more Asians into the country. Many of these immigrants set up restaurants and take away food stores expanding the New Zealand cuisine to include Thai, Japanese, Malaysian, Vietnamese and regional Chinese fare. New Zealand chefs such as Peter Gordon then took New Zealand food to a new level creating fusion cuisine which combined the best of local ingredients with a new approach to cooking, influenced by Pacific Rim culture. He is hailed as the person who introduced fusion cooking to the UK.
New Zealand Cuisine today
New Zealand’s gastronomic reputation and fusion cuisine are synonymous and many Kiwi chefs’ innovative ideas have been exported throughout the world. There are also a number of food icons recognised the world over. Zespri Gold kiwifruit is a new variety of the national fruit, green lipped mussels and paua are hot favourites from the wide range of available seafood, hokey pokey (honeycomb) ice cream and L & P, a soft drink made in Paeroa are staples for New Zealanders but offer a new taste sensation for visitors as do Fejoas, Tamarillos, Jaffas and pineapple lumps.
Television cooking programmes including the recent successful series "Hunger for the Wild" have served as a timely reminder that New Zealand is rich in wild foods that provide cheap and tasty treats. The programme’s chefs Steven Logan and Al Brown who own the Wellington restaurant Logan Brown want to encourage people to become less complacent and instead of settling for a trip to the supermarket rather be more involved in gathering fresh foods from the wild. And New Zealand’s Wildfoods Festival held every year in the South Island town of Hokitika has become world renowned for odd but interesting Kiwi foods like sheep’s eyes, bug larvae, wild highland beef, curried Hoki Tikka, pesto ice-cream, possum pie and worm sushi.
Wine and Food Festivals are held throughout New Zealand annually highlighting regional produce with complimentary wines.
If tasting the delights of New Zealand cuisine isn’t enough, visitors to the country can also learn to cook the Kiwi way. Cooking classes are becoming popular with overseas visitors and courses include Catherine Bell’s Epicurean Workshop in Auckland and Ruth Pretty’s school in the countryside north of Wellington.
A New Zealand food fact of interest is that Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, has more food haunts per capita than New York. There are more than 300 cafes and restaurants in the inner city area which spans only two kilometers in diameter. Actor Billy Boyd who plays Pippin the hobbit in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, fell in love with the Wellington saying it had the perfect mix of good restaurants, good coffee shops and really good theatre.
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