Hokitika, NZ: 'Where the wild foods are'
02 Mar 2011
Hokitika Wildfoods Festival
12 March 2011
Visitors to the 2011 Hokitika Wildfoods festival on the South Island’s wild West Coast face a sartorial as well as a gastronomic challenge this year with a theme of "where the wild foods are".
Festival-goers are expected to dress up in costumes that are indistinguishable from the dishes on the menu, and given the extremes of some of this year’s wild food, there ought to be some bizarre outfits.
The annual Hokitika festival has earned a world-wide reputation for the weirdest and wildest menu imaginable and makes an exclusive list of just 300 ‘unmissable festivals in the world’ by US travel guide Frommers.
Unique celebration
New Zealand’s bountiful landscape provides the range of weird and wacky ingredients that instigated the unique festival 22 years ago.
Each year new menu challenges are introduced and 2011 organisers have again excelled themselves with rare treats like raw scorpions, garlic sea cucumber, weka and pukeko, kaio / sea tulip, and horse semen shots.
The outrageous wildfoods experience will be enhanced by the general festival theme for this year’s 22nd anniversary -‘where the wild foods are’.
Organisers say disguises are de rigueur for many returning festival patrons who vie for the top costume prize of an overseas holiday - and with such a theme it’s expected there will be some innovative and wild interpretations.
Foot tapping and stomping
Music will again add to the festival atmosphere and locals are expecting ‘foot-tapping and stomping’ music from top line acts including the Beat Girls and a variety of accomplished jazz, blues, country and junk-shop-guitar folk rock artists.
The Royal New Zealand Ballet will turn lunch into a visual treat with its 'Tutus on Tour' interactive workshop incorporating a spectacular performance from the Hokitika Belly Dancers.
Local delicacies
Last year the wildfoods festival attracted 15,000 adventurous foodies who feasted from 80 stands on local delicacies ranging from ‘westcargots’ - snails in garlic butter - to a dose of natural viagra in the form of mountain oysters or sheep testicles, huhu grubs, ponga fern pickles, and wasp-larvae ice-cream.
Huhu grubs, the larvae of a forest beetle endemic to New Zealand, are a traditional Maori delicacy. The grubs provided a high fat instant snack that was eaten fresh from their fallen bush log homes, and Maori had different names for the grub depending on its stage of life.
Local delicacy
Festival-goers also consumed more than 10,000 whitebait patties - a favourite local delicacy that’s fished from the Hokitika river mouth, on the town’s southern boundary - washed down with gallons of local Monteith's beer.
Organiser Mike Keenan said the 2010 event generated about NZ$2 million for the West Coast economy and this year's festival promises to be another success.
"The quality of absolutely everything at the festival gets better each year. We’re like a fine wine - maturity becomes us."
Background: Hokitika Wildfoods Festival
The Wildfoods Festival was started by local woman Claire Bryant to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the town of Hokitika, in 1990.
As well as tasty New Zealand bush tucker, there is also entertainment in the form of music, dancing, mime and comedy throughout the day.
In 1996, the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival was awarded New Zealand's 'most unique event' title, and has twice been a winner in the New Zealand Tourism Awards.
And the festival recently made it onto a list of the world's top 300 'unmissable festivals' by US travel publisher Frommers.
Background: Hokitika
Hokitika is home to some of New Zealand's best pounamu craftsmen. Pounamu or New Zealand jade - known locally as greenstone - is found in the rivers and mountains of the southern west coast.
Hokitika was originally a gold town, settled in the 1860's during the South Island gold rush, and an important port.
Hokitika, population 4500, sits between a river mouth and a rugged West Coast beach, in the South Island of New Zealand. The little town has breathtaking views of the Southern Alps.
More information
NZ wildfoods take festival-goers back to nature
NZ’s traditional Maori kai festivals
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