Tasty festival serves up green mussel treats
03 Mar 2010
Havelock Mussel Festival
20 March 2010
Chefs and stallholders are planning to cook up a storm at this year’s annual Havelock Mussel Festival - a tasty celebration of the New Zealand green shell mussel.
A dream festival menu is on offer in 2010, with everything from cooking demonstrations, wine tasting, water displays and mussel opening competitions to entertainment from top Kiwi performers.
Organisers are expecting crowds of up to 6,000 people at Havelock Domain, located in Havelock, New Zealand’s ‘mussel capital’ - in the South Island’s stunning Marlborough Sounds region.
Something for everyone
Iconic New Zealand entertainer Frankie Stevens, famous for judging New Zealand Idol, the local version of the hit international TV franchise, headlines the day’s entertainment. Also featured at the festival are local Kiwi musicians, the Marlborough Boys College jazz band and Queen Charlotte Kapa Haka.
There are also cooking demonstrations from New Zealand celebrity chefs and wine tasting from Yealands Estate in Blenheim - known for being the first winery in New Zealand to sell a selection of wines in environmentally-friendly plastic bottles.
Mussels are, of course, the focus of the festival, with a huge selection of stalls offering food, wine and beer. A record number of 70 stalls, selling everything from mussel chowder and marinated mussels to boil-ups and smoked eel were there in 2009.
Another popular event is the mussel opening competition, in which teams of mussel shuckers compete against each other to see how fast they can shell mussels. Each year, some of the money made at the festival is returned to the community of Havelock.
New Zealand’s unique mussels
The New Zealand green lipped or green shell mussel is a native New Zealand shellfish. It is easily distinguished by the bright green shell, which opens to reveal creamy white (male) or orange (female) flesh.
Mussel farming is a huge part of the aqua-culture industry and there are many mussel farms dotted along New Zealand’s 16,000km of coastline.
The most famous regions for cultivating green shell mussels are the Marlborough Sounds, at the top of the South Island, and the Coromandel, on the western edge of the North Island’s Hauraki Gulf.
The clean, unpolluted ocean waters of New Zealand offer the perfect environment for raising mussels.
Kiwi mussel farmers use a method called ‘longline’, where a line of buoys is anchored to the sea floor at both ends. The baby mussels (spat) are attached to the rope suspended between the buoys and generally take 12 - 18 months to mature.
Background: Havelock, New Zealand
Known as the ‘mussel capital’ of New Zealand, the seaside town of Havelock, located in the South Island’s Marlborough region - is the gateway to the Marlborough Sounds.
Havelock was once a gold-mining town and is the perfect base to explore Pelorus Sound - a beautiful, scenic waterway that forms part of the Marlborough Sounds. The sound can be explored by water taxi or launch from Havelock. Remote Kenepuru Sound can also be reached from Havelock by kayak.
The main attraction for visitors to Havelock is, of course, its famous green lipped mussels and most local eateries are specialists, including the iconic Slip Inn Restaurant and The Mussel Pot.
More information
Coromandel - region information
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