THE FOOD
I won’t say it’s quite the same as Europe, but Kiwis eat out a lot. They probably have more cafés per square km than Alaska has coffee shops. New Zealand also has a much greater Asian influence than I realized before our visit. It seemed like every other restaurant was Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, or Thai cuisine, and every one that I ate at was absolutely delicious. If it’s not one of those though, it’s pastries. New Zealand’s most abundant and memorable food, in my opinion, was the pie. Not like grandma’s apple pie, but delicious, savory, meat, gravy, and egg filled pies with puff pastry crusts and lids, or better yet the mashed potato top. Steak pies, kidney pies, lamb’s fry pies (these didn’t come in gluten free crusts and I won’t say I’m entirely disappointed about that), egg pies, mince pies. Of all the pies we had in NZ, the best by far was at a small bakery in our tiny little town of Darfield named…. The Darfield Bakery! While their gluten free selection was of course smaller than their non-gluten free selection, there was still plenty for me to choose from :-). Also delicious were the burgers we had. Imagine my surprise when, coming in as late at night as we did, the Darfield Hotel Restaurant was not only still open, but they had burgers and sandwiches with gluten free buns! I was pleasantly shocked to find how easy it was for my pain in the ass gluten free requirement to be met everywhere we went on the South Island. Huge bonus for NZ. Also, killer fish and chips everywhere. New Zealand was totally yummy.
