New Zealand food is interesting...
Most of the meats and cheeses here are all grass-fed, grass-finished. All of the produce and honey is organic. Although, there are very limited options when it comes to processed grocery food. Not many healthy choices, but they are all fun and interesting to try nonetheless.
The candy shops (lollie shops as they refer to them here) are pretty great. Just like their cafes, there are craft lollie shops in every small town. You walk in with walls of glass jars holding over a hundred different classic gummy lollies or chocolate lollies. Our favorite gummies are the creamy milk bottles or the strawberry-and cream gummies.
Unique to New Zealand is their love for fruit gel and marshmallow mixed with chocolate. They do this for ice cream bars, chocolate bars, and a 'chocko fish'. It's essentially a dark chocolate fish shape with a raspberry gel and marshmallow layer inside. Almost like a Turkish delight with marshmallow - pretty good! They call all their fruit jell chocolates 'Jelly Tips'.
Like Australia, chocolate covered honeycomb is pretty popular in many different forms. Below is a list of unique New Zealand foods I jotted down, followed by some random food pictures along the way that we took over our 18-day road tour around the South Island.
Again like Australia, you get absolutely spoiled at every cafe you step into. Enormous variety of different pastries, cakes, and desserts. Many are different from what we know back home. The coffee is always on point, and it is standard in NZ to always have 2 shots of espresso in any drink. If you asked for an extra shot, expect 3 total in your cuppa.
1. Venison Pot Pie (Meat Pie)
2. Venison Sausage Roll
---All their venison here is a mixed breed of Elk and Red Deer. I believe it's called a Wapiti. They're everywhere down south!
3. 'Lollie' Cake - tan cafe cake with marshmallows and Lollie gummies stuffed within.
4. New Zealand -style burger. - Essential to have a beetroot slice like the Aussie -style , but omitting the fried egg and adding a pineapple slice instead.
5. New Zealand -style pizza. - very good pizza, but not a fan of the local additions. They are saucy people and every place with SMOTHER and TOP the pizza full of sauce. So much you can't taste anything else. Order the sauce on the side and you will be fine...and then they'll also assume you're from the States.
6. Grass-Finished Lamb Shanks - incredible.
7. Green-Tipped Muscles. - Must try
8. Whitebait - popular, local tiny white fish that are treated like sardines.
9. Manuka Honey - local interesting honey that has unique flavor based on an endemic plant the bees pollinate here
10. Crayfish - Colder water, the better.
11. Grass-finished Beef Steak - Almost all cattle here are grass fed and grass finished. Not much marbling in the meat but it's still delicious.
12. Hokey-Pokey Ice Cream - unique NZ flavor of vanilla bean with local honeycomb toffee mixed in.
13. Honey Milk - milk sweetened with honey.
15. Ginger Slice - dessert layered bar with ginger.
-----I'll add some processed foods and pics below as I find time!