Month: May 2013

Dec. 6, 2012 – May 29, 2013

After six months in New Zealand, I can make some observations about modern New Zealand cuisine. Guidebooks consistently describe it as “Pacific Rim fusion,” combining the flavors of Asia and Polynesia with classic British fare. Well, I’m not sure I ever saw this exactly. What I did see is Kiwis appreciate good food from many cultures; so if you’re in a city you can generally find what you’re in the mood for: Indian, Italian, French, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Indonesian, Mexican, Korean, American, and Middle-Eastern, along with basic seafood, steak, sandwiches, salads and burgers. That said, here are some food-related things that stood out to us as distinctly Kiwi.

1. Kiwis love their fish and chips. No matter where you go or how small the town, you can always find a fish and chips “takeaway” (take-out), and most restaurants have fish and chips on the menu.
(Our previous fish and chips post is here.)

2. Kiwis also love their meat pies, and these can always be found in the glass cases of cafes, bakeries and many gas stations. It took me a long time to not to feel let down when I realized a sign saying “fresh pies” didn’t refer to warm fruit pie with ice cream. Basically meat pies have a meat and gravy filling completely encased by crust and meant to be eaten out of hand. Fancier versions have vegetables–picture a small handheld chicken pot pie–and might require cutlery.

3. New Zealand has a wide variety of shellfish and seafood, and seafood chowder is a staple here. Surprisingly, I don’t think I ever saw clam chowder even though they have an abundance of clams. Chowder is usually a mixture of seafood.

4. Kiwis have a unique way of making their burgers, adding a slice or two of beet and an egg. (Our post about it here.) The combination is really delicious, but I wish they’d make their beef patties thinner. Restaurant burgers are so thick that it’s a challenge to figure out how you’re going to eat it. The beef often has a meat-loafy quality to it, too. I don’t know if it’s the way they grind it or if they mix things in, but it took us a long time to find a good burger place that, along with the thick patties, serves a thinner patty, too. (Thank you Burger Fuel!)

5. Kiwis love pizza and it’s easy to find here, along with some very good Italian food. We were thrilled and very surprised to even find a chain (Sal’s) that sells authentic New York pizza (we’ve eaten lots of pizza in New York so we know). Now, if only someone would do Chicago-style pizza.

6. There’s an abundance of Asian food here, but it’s a little different in some ways from the US. While there’s plenty of Chinese restaurants, there’s a surprising lack of takeout Chinese food. Instead, the take-out Asian food places tend to be Thai. It’s high time someone introduced New Zealand to Panda Express! I have no doubt it would be a huge hit here.

Conversely, someone needs to introduce more Indonesian and Malaysian food to the US. It’s much more common in New Zealand and really good.

7. Thankfully, Kiwis are embracing Mexican food. The good news is there are some fabulous Mexican restaurants with the type of food you’d find in Mexico City. The bad news is they tend to be expensive by the time you add up the main dishes, chips and guacamole, margaritas, etc. There’s one restaurant in Auckland much like the casual and cheap American chain Chipotle, and it seems to be expanding.

We haven’t yet seen anything like El Torito, which I’d definitely call American Mexican food, but we have seen Tex-Mex.

8. The pub is alive and well here. There were British pubs and Irish pubs, but the best pubs were the Belgian ones. There are a lot of great beers in the world, but the Belgians, without a doubt, make the best. No contest. Their food is very good, too.

9. New Zealand has all the fruits and veggies we have in the US, but what’s interesting is what they favor. While American salads are based on iceberg or green leafy lettuces, the Kiwis prefer rocket (aka arugula). I never thought I cared for arugula much, but maybe I didn’t give it a fair chance because here I love it. You’ll also see a lot of pumpkin in both salads and cooked dishes. It’s not the same as our American pumpkin but more like a large squash. Other favorites include beet, which shows up on burgers, sandwiches and salads, and kumara (sweet potato) which is in many cooked dishes. Of course the regular potato is widely used, too.

10. Aioli, basically garlic mayonnaise, is the condiment of choice in New Zealand. Of course there’s generally tomato sauce (ketchup in the US) on the table. And they have mustard. But aioli is generally the condiment for burgers, sandwiches, etc. Another frequently seen condiment is peri-peri sauce, a spicy Portuguese chili sauce that’s very tasty.

11. The farmer’s market is very popular here, just like in America. And there’s always an artisan bread maker at any given market where you can buy some fabulous bread. Overall in America we have a greater variety and quality of bread in our supermarkets. If you want the best bread in New Zealand, you need to go to a farmer’s market or a bakery.

12. As far as bakery goods, the British heritage really shows in the scones that are abundant here. Some are savory, and some are sweet, and you can sometimes find a place that serves them with jam and Devonshire cream (a thick buttery whipped cream meant to be served with scones).

Muffins are also very popular, as are croissants. Afghan cookies usually sit in a jar on the counter. (Afgahns post) And the cronut (croissant and donut combined) craze has spread to New Zealand. Not many bakeries make them, and when they do they sell out early. Like in America, I think that their periodic unavailability makes people want them more.

13. The breakfasts here are excellent, particularly if you like poached eggs. Kiwis seem to specialize in making poached eggs–they are consistently perfect. What seems to be a bit of an art in America seems effortless for Kiwis as it’s their basic egg preparation. I don’t know what their secret is, maybe it’s something about the chickens that makes them lay these wonderfully poachable eggs.

A frequent breakfast side dish here is creamed mushrooms, which are fabulous. My favorite breakfast here is poached eggs on toast with a side of creamed mushrooms.

And let’s not forget the coffee, which I’ve already done a post about here.

14. Finally, for dessert, there’s generally cake, bread pudding, ice cream, brownies and the like. While there are fruit crumbles and crisps and deep-dish fruit desserts, the classic American wedge of fruit pie seems rare. Maybe I just didn’t look hard enough–I’ll have to investigate this further next season. Early in the summer pavlova is abundant as it’s the classic Christmas and summer dessert.

(Previous Pavlova Post)

15. Of course I should mention Maori food, the cuisine of the native Polynesian New Zealanders. Their big feasts are cooked in an earth oven, and Maori hangi are popular tourist happenings in places like Rotorua. I’d compare them to a Hawaiian luau as they often include a cultural dance show. I have not yet dragged Rich to one of these, but I went years ago and very much enjoyed it.

16. I’ll mention here something unique about the typical cafe layout: they always have a big glass case filled with various dishes like salads, casseroles, sandwiches, baked goods, etc.

Generally you go to the counter and get a menu, and it’s a good idea to take a look in the glass case as those items are generally not included on the menu. (I’ve more than once had the annoying experience of finishing a meal and going to pay afterwards only to spot something I would have preferred sitting in the glass case.)

After you have a seat, a wait person will bring your water glasses and a big glass bottle of cold water for the table. If you drink it all during your meal, they’ll refill it. I love this tradition as it saves having to frantically wave at the staff for another glass of water, which so often happens in water-stingy California.

Also unique is you go to the counter to pay after your meal. This is also nice in that you aren’t stuck waiting for someone to pick up your check or bring back your change. These little traditions make life so much nicer for both the customer and the wait staff.

In all, there’s lots of great food in New Zealand, but there are a few things we really miss from America. Here’s our list:

a. Cheeseburgers. Not just any cheeseburgers–after all, we can get pretty good ones in New Zealand–but a top-notch burger from a place like Five Guys, Hodad’s (in San Diego), Burger City Grill (in Los Angeles), or Rainbow Oaks (a restaurant just outside of Fallbrook). For that matter, a burger from In-n-Out would be pretty good, too.

b. Southern California Mexican Food, the cheap but delicious kind. Things like a carne asada burrito from Loma Bonita, beans and rice from Las Quatro Milpas, tacos from Tito’s, and green chili quesadillas from El Taco come to mind. We also wouldn’t mind a Rubio’s fish taco.

c. Good Sub Sandwiches. Not the kind from Subway, but the kind that come from a good deli. Like Sorrento’s in San Pedro, or any deli in New York. For that matter, we’d love a great cheesesteak, too. You can get steak and cheese sandwiches in New Zealand, but they tend to be restaurant items to be eaten with a knife and fork. It’s not the same.

d. A Good Milkshake. Again milkshakes are easy to find in New Zealand but are most often like flavored milk – unless you order a thickshake, but even then it’s usually not much thicker. A top-notch, really ice-creamy milkshake from a place like Burger City Grill is unmatched here. Oddly the best shake we’ve had in the South Pacific is the coffee frappuccino at The Aquarium restaurant in Vava’u, Tonga. It’s thick, ice-creamy, and delicious.

e. Panda Express. Half rice, half chow mein, and two main dishes in a Styrofoam container. Add hot sauce and a large iced tea. Damn that was good.

f. Iced Tea. I always assumed that was everywhere in the world. I was wrong. It seems to be an American thing. (I’m not counting that god-awful, overly-sweetened stuff sold in bottles.)

g. Good Brie or Camembert. New Zealand makes a lot of adequate hard cheese and excellent goat cheese, but unless you go to the weekly French market in Auckland (where they sell cheese actually made in France), you cannot find good runny cheese. It’s not that brie and camembert aren’t widely available–they are. The problem is that while they’re soft, they’re not spreadable. Somehow Australia has mastered decent brie and camembert; so I don’t know what the issue is with New Zealand. If you’re a cheesemaker and happen to read this, please consider practicing your craft in New Zealand. They have the cows/goats/sheep, and they have the sweet grass. They need you.

Excuse me while I go book a ticket back to the US. Just kidding, but I will say when we do go back to visit the US, we will be eating. A lot.–Cyndi

December – May, 2013

You may wonder, as you read some of these strange names, if we have trouble pronouncing them.  We don’t when we’re talking to each other as we’ll happily mangle them.  The trouble comes in talking to the Kiwis.

It all starts when someone asks us where we’ve been, what we’ve seen.  We’ll tell them, and they’ll have no idea where we’re talking about.  We’ll describe the place and location, saying the name again.  Sudden recognition will then set in: “Oh, you mean xyz!” Yes, that’s what we said! XYZ!  We’ll then get a lesson on how to pronounce xyz properly, repeating it until it’s mostly understandable to a native Kiwi (saying it as if we were native Kiwis is usually beyond our ability).

It gets complicated in that some of the sounds are unique, like ng together has a soft g, as in “singer,” and wh is pronounced like f (if you’re using the more correct Maori pronunciation, otherwise, the Kiwis might just tell you wh it’s just wh).  Thus Whakatane is pronounced faka-tawn-e, where an American might think it’s waka-tane.  On top of all that, Kiwis tend to emphasize the first syllable.  Opua isn’t pronounced Oh-poo-a, it’s Oh-poo-a.

Over the six months we were in New Zealand, we got a lot better.  Saying w like an f is second nature, but I still can’t do that ng sound quite right.  Of course then we went to Fiji where they have their own really bizarre pronunciations, but that’s a subject for another blog post. –Cyndi

Here’s a pervious post about some of our pronunciation troubles.

May 25 – May 29, 2013

After Rotorua, it was time to get back to waiting for a weather window to make the jump to Fiji. While Rich is really good at using technology to predict weather (GRIBS, etc.), the area between New Zealand and the tropics is particularly challenging. It’s a volatile, ever-changing dance of highs, lows, and in-betweens stemming from Antarctica, the tropics, and Australia. What’s predicted and what actually happens are often two different things, and weather forecasting here is a bit of an art. Thus, we like to hire an expert, not just to help us pick a window, but to update us every day as the picture changes.

It’s always interesting to talk to people about their weather prediction choices. Some people prefer to do their own weather analysis, while others have good luck with Gulf Harbor Radio, an SSB radio weather guru who does general predictions and free forecasting for boats underway. He’s pretty good, but you need to be patient and listen through all the forecasts for various areas and personalized forecasts for other boats before he gets to you–sometimes a long wait.

Others of us like to hire our own weather router. Our favorite weather router, Bob McDavitt, puts out a weekly free newsletter commenting on the coming weather for the week (WeatherGram). Unfortunately, some people mistake this for weather routing and use it to make decisions. It’s not, and they shouldn’t. It can give you an general idea of what might be coming, but it’s not the same thing as using a weather router.

A good weather router makes a personalized daily forecast taking into account your boat’s speed and issuing your sail plan as close to your departure time as possible. Most important, though, are the daily updates via e-mail. Even then, it’s not a perfect prediction as your router can only make his best guess. Weather systems can suddenly stall, speed up, slow down, enlarge, dissipate, or turn in another direction. Mankind is very smart. Mankind can go to the moon. Mankind will never master Mother Nature, though, and trying to figure out what the weather will do is akin to herding cats.

By now we’d signed up with two weather routing services. This wasn’t our intention originally. We’d been using Bob Mc Davitt and liked him, but a friend of ours had consistently had great luck with Commander’s, a service based on the US east coast. He calls them and asks for clarification of weather situations even when he’s not on passage. We liked the idea of being able to call on the sat phone and decided to give Commander’s a try.

Well, they didn’t work out for us. They picked a weather window for us and sent a sail plan that had been made 48 hours earlier (we were flabbergasted by this–48 hours old might as well be a month old). That window deteriorated and we opted out, and they chided us, saying it wasn’t likely to get any better in the future. Confused and frustrated; we decided to hire Bob Mc Davitt, but also stayed with Commanders to see how they compared. It was no contest: Bob Mc Davitt ended up coming out way ahead, the most dramatic example happening while underway when Commanders failed to warn us of some dangerous weather ahead that Bob pointed out in an email in all caps – “GO WEST NOW!!!!!” (more about this in an upcoming post).

Does this mean our friend is wrong in using Commanders? Nope. Everyone has to use trial and error to find out what works for them. Some people love Commanders. Some don’t. Others of us like Bob Mc Davitt, but some don’t. Some people do their own best forecasting, while others will listen to Gulf Harbor or other radio nets. Our friend Webb Chiles doesn’t even believe in weather windows, and he’s sailed around the world 5 times! It’s a bit like religion: what works for you, works for you; but it may not work for someone else.

Finally, it looked like a good weather window was coming. During our final days, we finished provisioning and spent a lot of time at marine and home goods stores doing final small boat projects. Meanwhile, the nights and mornings were pretty darn cold, but we couldn’t complain too much as our fellow cruisers in Whangarei were seeing ice on their docks in the mornings! It wasn’t quite that cold in Tauranga, but there was one afternoon so chilly we went to Phil’s, had our lunch smack in front of the fireplace, and switched chairs during the meal so we could warm up our other sides. We were getting pretty anxious to head to the tropics.

Below is a hodgepodge of pictures from Tauranga and Mount Maunganui. I don’t know if I ever mentioned our marina was right by an airport popular with gliders and stunt pilots, and we always enjoyed watching them. The cute squid came to check us out after we splashed back into the water following our haulout. (As always click to enlarge and scroll.)–Cyndi

Cruising Season 2013

Whenever we go to new place, we like to visit Mc Donald’s to see what specialty menu item they have for that region. For example, there’s the McBaguette in French Polynesia, McPatatas in Mexico, Portuguese sausage in Hawaii, Thai chicken wings in Hong Kong, etc. (If you look on Wikipedia, the long list of Mc Donald’s regional items is astonishing!).

Here in New Zealand we’ve had some really interesting stuff. Over the summer season there’s a Kiwiburger with beet and egg and a chicken sandwich called the Scorcher Peri-Peri (crispy chicken with spicy Portuguese peri-peri sauce) that’s really tasty. On the regular menu are lime shakes and Georgie Pies (meat pies with steak, ground beef, and cheese). The lime shakes are very good, but we haven’t been able to bring ourselves to try the Georgie Pies as we usually avoid meat-intensive items at Mc Donald’s.

The best thing we’ve had is the New York burger from the Taste of America series of burgers. The choices included a Texas BBQ burger with bacon, a California chicken burger with chili-lime mayo, and the New York burger with beef, a spicy mustard/mayo sauce, pickles, onions, lettuce and cheese. The really special thing about the NY burger, though, was the bagel bun with lots of seasonings, like an “everything” bagel. This burger was one of the best things we’ve had at any Mc Donald’s–ever! Sadly this temporary series wasn’t around long and I hope it comes back. –Cyndi

(AKA Food Porn–Rich)

April and May, 2013

And now for my favorite topic: food and what we ate while we were there! We generally had breakfast and dinner on the boat, but we’d usually go out for lunch. Our favorite spot was Phil’s Place, which happened to be right at the marina. The food was fantastic, the people wonderful, and the atmosphere beautiful. In the summer we enjoyed sitting on the deck or by an open window, and in the late fall we cozied up by the fireplace. We had many wonderful meals at Phil’s, but I think our go-to favorite was the seafood chowder, especially with a cold glass of sauvignon blanc.

Another favorite spot was Yoku Sushi. Real sushi bars, where chefs make your sushi as you order it, are very rare in New Zealand. Sushi here is pre-made and laid out in glass cabinets. You get a tray, pick what you want from the shelves, then pay at the cash register. The downside is it’s generally not as good as sushi made on the spot; the upside is that it’s a lot cheaper. And by choosing carefully we found some really good stuff, like the salmon sushi! We had many happy meals here.

We also had a lot of meals at Turkish To Go (blog post coming). And we enjoyed at few meals at Subway and Mc Donald’s (blog post coming).

Less often, we’d go for meals at the Fresh Fish Market. They have world-class fish and chips and it’s inexpensive, but it also tends to be crowded with a long wait for food. We did enjoy a few meals at the Astrolabe restaurant in Mount Maunganui. It’s a fun place with a cozy atmosphere and pretty good food.

Places we only visited one or two times were the Texas-themed Lone Star, Gengy’s, Mongolian Barbecue, and Bravo for delicious pizza. The food at these places was quite good, but the prices were high so we didn’t visit them very often.

Just before we left we discovered Little India, which has fantastic food and nicely-priced lunch specials. We looked forward to more meals here next year. Comida Spanish restaurant was another last-minute discovery, with great food, live music and a festive atmosphere.

Of course we visited a few coffee houses, including frequent trips to Starbuck’s and Robert Harris, but we also checked out the local roasters at Fixation and Fusion. There’s a lot of good coffee in New Zealand. And we were thrilled to discover The Donut Factory hidden in an business/industrial park. They make donuts for markets but sell extras at their door. It had been a long time since we had good donuts and these were a treat. –Cyndi