Food for thought…….

I’ve held off writing about food for a couple of reasons: 1) outside of Auckland it hasn’t been that interesting, and 2) I didn’t want to bore everyone to death. Some of you know how much Gary and I love food, so I could probably go on forever, normally.

One of the things that’s different in NZ is that you don’t tip your server unless the service was exemplary, and so far what we have found is that it hasn’t been exemplary. Although in proper restaurants (instead of cafes) we have been tipping a bit, sometimes; hard to break old habits. The wages for servers are higher than back home, and so my feeling is that they are a bit more laid back when it comes to service especially if they are not working for tips. I’ve been thinking about this a lot – which way is best – getting a better wage (in principal I like this best) or getting a lot in tips (you could possibly make a lot more – I can’t help but like that too), OR should employers just pay really well? Food for thought…….

All this to say, that we haven’t had a lot to say about food until the last few days, which I’ll get to later. We do love however how amazing the coffee is. No matter where you go for a coffee – even a roadside diner – it’s fabulous. It’s all espresso based. We learned that the equivalent of a cappuccino is called a flat white (maybe it is back home too?), and I’ve been having a long black – that’s standard. The flavour is never bitter but strong and tasty just like I like it.

The wine is also very tasty – love the sauvignon blancs. Although a lot of them are similar to what we get back home there are others that are quite different – not as perfume or flowery. If you normally don’t like suav blanc (trying to talk like the locals) you would probably find one you like here. I also really love Pinot Noirs, and they do that really well here too. The unfortunate part is that their good wines are fairly expensive to buy at the store. The cheap stuff is a bit plonky, kind of like cheap, tinny Niagara wines. I’ll talk a little more about wine later on as well.

We bought Kerikeri oranges straight from the town of Kerikeri. Has anyone heard of it, or the oranges (I can’t recall if I saw them in Toronto once)? Tim, were you in Kerikeri? Yummy juicy oranges! Straight off the tree and not sprayed – how good is that! Avocados seem to be in season here as well.  We also tried what I think may be a kumquat – we were walking by a tree and decided to try one, probably not a good idea when you don’t know what it is.  It was really yummy – does anyone know if this photo is of kumquats?

There is lots of Asian influence here – an Indian, Japanese or Thai restaurant at every corner and in between, even in the smaller towns. We are holding ourselves back until we get to Thailand and maybe India.  I lied – I had an amazing Thai noodle/soup dish in our Napier Art Deco Hotel restaurant.

Restaurants are very generous with their portions – way too generous. I’m embarrassed to post this photo, but Gary thought it was a good idea. I have to allow some contribution from him LOL. I can’t just make him drive all day long with no rewards. The one consolation was that it was gluten-free bread!

 

And here’s another light meal……

We stopped off in a place called Rotorua, famous for their thermal baths – sulphur everywhere! If you don’t like that smell you may not want to visit this town. Gary could smell it in our room but I couln’t (Gary has a much more sensitive nose than I do, though – mine is attuned to the fine bouquet of a good wine instead. Gary believes that I can smell the sulphur too but that it just doesn’t bother me. Maybe.). We were planning on staying here for a couple of days but it’s SO touristy that neither of us can stand it, and we had a bit of an experience with hotwire.com this time around, so ended up in a very crappy hotel (it felt like time stood still from the ’60’s and nothing has been done to it since, not in a good way). The hotel didn’t have us booked due to a hotwire.com error( amazingly enough Hotwire fully refunded us due to the circumstances – I’m sure this is very rare for them), so we rambled on…….to wine region, yeah! If you’re familiar with NZ wines you may know Hawkes Bay.

But before further talk about wine/food, and while I’m on the subject of crappy, here’s a sign that I just loved – this is typical NZ humour.

Heading a little further south of the stinky town, we stayed in Napier which is right on the bay and known for it’s Art Deco architecture – apparently in has the highest concentration in a city in the southern hemisphere. Any guesses as to who has the highest concentration in the northern hemisphere? We’ve booked ourselves in to a lovely Art Deco (of course) hotel called The Masonic Art Deco Hotel; a splurge after the previous hotel.

A young Queen Elizabeth (and Prince Philip) stayed here and waved from the exact spot that I’m standing at.  Maybe we stayed in the same room.

They know their food and wine here in Napier – love cities like this. We had lunch at The Mission Estate Winery on our first day here – probably the best meal yet, and NOT the most expensive. Did I mention that things are expensive here in NZ?  And lunch at the Black Barn Winery the next day – YUM.  Here’s a thumbs-up photo of my venison dish (the carrots have their thumbs up too – oh, so good, can you tell?

 

We’ll be heading to the southern end of the North Island shortly and spending a couple of days in Wellington (supposedly a pretty funky town) before taking the ferry over to the South Island. Apparently Wellington has quite the coffee scene going on, although I was told that Melbourne, Australia is really the spot for coffee culture. This has truly been a road trip, no stopping too long anywhere. But it’s been fantastic and we wouldn’t change how we’ve done it.

Off food topic now, we came across NZ’s known largest and oldest tree. It was truly a spiritual moment; it was SO beautiful and grand. I think it was bigger than some of the really big trees in BC, but you can’t tell from the photo since we couldn’t get close enough to get some perspective.  I think you’ll still get a sense of it.

And a few scenery photos during our driving.

 

And just some quirky photos:

 

Well, all that talk about food has me hungry – until next time…….