New Zealand: Where in the World Wednesday!

Where in the World Wednesday flies us to the southern hemisphere to NEW ZEALAND. Our tour guide today is my friend CARLA who is spending the year traveling the world with her husband Mike! I miss Carla dearly and she's only been away for barely three months. In any case, I keep up with her and Mike through their blog, and she was so awesome to take a break from their adventuring to answer some of my Qs! I mean, let's see, so far they've basked in the sun in Tahiti, gone sky diving, visited the Hobbits village, and seen countless beautiful vistas. Miss you Carla and Mike - hope you're having a wonderful time!! (They were in New Zealand for a month and are now in Indonesia I think?) :)

(1) Are there any dishes that you think are traditionally "New Zealand"? Have you come across any favorites?

Traditional New Zealand: The Meat Pies are definitely traditional NZ as well as L&P Soda. Other meals that stood out: Bangers & Mash: (Huge Sausage on top of mashed potatoes); Lamb Shanks; Toasties (grilled panini type sandwiches: ham, cheese & pineapple mostly); pauoa fritters (spelling is probably off) certain type of fish in NZ that is made into fritters; and whitebait (again certain type of fish)!

(2) Do you find that the food in New Zealand by certain ethnicities or cultures? If so, which ones?

NZers love all different types of food especially Asian since there is a fairly large Asian population in its bigger cities i.e. Auckland. There were a lot of Asian fusion, Indian, and tons of Japanese restaurants in the cities. In the smaller towns not as much.

(3) If you were putting together a food gift basket representative of New Zealand for a friend, what would you include in it?

Fish & Chips; Green Lipped Mussels; Meat Pies; Kapiti Ice Cream (Manuka Honey); Kumara (Sweet Potato) Chips

(4) Was there anything that surprised you about New Zealand eats?

How good everything was - the sandwiches, the soups, the desserts, the coffee - everything was top quality! Like there are no coffee pots - instead they make your coffee (flate white for me, long black for Mike) fresh from their Italian barista machine or they bring your coffee in a small French Press. Every sandwich we had was on GREAT bread. Totally impressed by their food chops!

(5) Is there a "national drink" in New Zealand?

Speights Beer in the South Island; L&P: national soda

(6) What do you usually have for breakfast? For lunch?

Breakfast: usually we switch between oatmeal and meat pies (mince and cheese)

Lunch: wow that depends! A lot of the time we skipped lunch - but sometimes we had sandwiches/ fish and chips

(7) Any memorable New Zealand food experiences? Anything you've heard about that you want to try?

The best food experience we had was catching our fish and lobster and cooking it ourselves. I have never had seafood that tasted so good!!