Are We Hungry Yet?

Are we Hungry Yet?

* Kiwi birds are becoming endangered. With a population in the millions a few years ago there are now less than a million.

* The egg of a kiwi can weigh as much as a quarter the weight of the mother kiwi bird. Ouch!

* What’s for breakfast at many NZ restaurants? Mutton, honey.

I want to say how disappointed I am in the light-hearted response to our journal entries. To ask trite questions such as how many Swiss Chalets we’ve encountered and to post anonymously as someone called “your favourite daughter” fails to acknowledge the journals’ scholarly tone However, I will rise above that and use those questions and comments as discussion topics which can turn into more of a National Geographic moment.

First the silly question around how many Swiss Chalets. The answer is, of course, none. Swiss Chalets feature chicken and we’ve been avoiding chicken for fear of contracting the Avian Flu. Now we’re concerned, however, that because we’re drinking so much bottled water that we may contract the Evian Flu. As to restaurants though…..

There are very few North American take-out restaurants here. Most cities have one or two McDonalds and maybe a Burger King. But that’s about it. The de rigueur of fast food are cafes in any urban area from cities to small villages. Usually consists of a counter / display area with a dozen tables inside and often with three or four tables outside. Premium coffee (more on that later) pastries, panninis, and small meat & vegetable pies are the mainstays. You typically order and pay at the counter then sit. When your food is ready it is brought to your table. Very European.

We’ve eaten breakfast a lot in these cafes. Breakfast menus are quite different than in NA where we are offered endless varieties of eggs and breakfast meats along with pancakes, French toast and so on. Here there are usually choices of only about 8 items. The choices are very similar in all restaurants. Here’s what a typical one would look like:

1) Toasted muesli with fruit and Greek yogurt.

2) Eggs Benedict

3) Pancakes with banana, bacon and syrup

4) French toast with fruit.

5) Fruit salad

6) Full breakfast (eggs, meat, potatoes, toast)

You would pretty much see these on every single menu. Meusli was on every one, other cereals are rarely offered. Eggs Benedict would have been Eggs Florentine or similar but almost never bacon and eggs or similar. Along with these five staples you might find a bagel, or some pastry offering. Often you would be offered a steak or lamb as an alternative.

I usually start the day with an Americano (or Long Black) at one of these cafes around 7:00 while reading the daily newspaper and watching the area start the day. We typically eat both breakfast and lunch at one of these cafes, usually at a table on the sidewalk watching the traffic go by. (Temperatures here are in the low 20s and very comfortable for sitting out.

Dinner is typically served in these cafes as well (where the menu got a little more elaborate), at traditional restaurants or at some kind of hybrid. At pubs for example you claim your table, then go to the bar to order and pay for food and drinks. You wait while the drinks are poured and take them back to the table. When your food is ready it’s brought to your table by a server. In restaurants you might pay for them when ordering, to the server or often you simply went to the cashier after finishing your meal, telling them what you had. (Reggie’s style)

Restaurant choices are quite different than what we’re used to. In NA we’re typically offered countless steak or seafood restaurants with a sprinkling of “ethnic” alternatives. Here a steak restaurant would be the ethnic choice. I would say there are more Indian restaurants than any other style, followed closely by Thai, Chinese and variations of Asian influenced menus. Then, a plethora of restaurants offering a little bit of everything. Seafood is so common and accessible that there aren’t any restaurants referred to as seafood. Italian restaurants can be found but you have to look for them.

Speaking of pizza. It’s not restricted to “Italian” restaurants and can be found everywhere. They are not typically the tomato sauce and pepperoni style though, rather usually reflecting the cuisine of the restaurant. We’ve seen smoked salmon pizzas, duck pizzas and lamb pizzas. (One restaurant featuring pizzas had names for each one. The pizza topped with venison was entitled “Run Bambi, Run”). Then the lowly steakhouse. While you can get some kind of a steak in most of the restaurants I’ve noticed less than a half dozen steak restaurants in all of our travels. So, not only are there no Swiss Chalets, there are no Outbacks. Sweet irony when you think of it, considering how close we are to the country of outbacks. While lamb can be found in most restaurants in one form or another, it’s not really played up as a specialty item. There are no “Mary had a Little Lambchop” franchises. Hmmm… an opportunity?

Most restaurants and cafes offer wine and beer. Dinner cafes and restaurants are licensed, BYO or “both”. In BYO and both categories you simply bring your own opened or unopened bottle (wine or beer) to the restaurant where they will supply glasses. We have yet to be charged a corkage fee. We’ve encountered BYO restaurants before but had never seen one where you can either buy from the restaurant with their usual mark-up or bring your own. A typical experience in Rotorua comes to mind. We went to a “both” restaurant and made our menu selections. I then walked directly across the street to a wine store, asked for the manager’s recommendation to match our food and returned in less than five minutes with an excellent New Zealand merlot for about $11.00 cdn.. Whatever we didn’t finish, we simply re-corked and took back to our hotel room. Way civilized.

Then there is the Runs for the Cure diet pursued by Claire for a few days. Dry white toast for breakfast, and rice for dinner. Simple, yet elegant; just crying for a zesty young chardonnay. Sometimes when she was feeling a little adventurous, she substituted a bagel (no seeds please) for the toast. In this way she avoided repeating herself (in more than one sense of the word) ad nauseum (again). Well, you get the point. She’s back on track now however and joining the rest of us in our gastronomic adventures.

With preconceived notions of New Zealand having an English tea culture, I was surprised by the seriousness with which coffee making is taken. The machine of choice is an elaborate device with a hopper full of coffee beans at one end sitting beside several faucets, tampers and so on. Virtually every place that coffee was available had one of these machines. Most coffees were a variation of an expresso; very manual intensive. Upon ordering a cup, a two minute process was commenced, elaborately measuring out the amount, tamping and applying hot water, hot milk and so on. No such thing as a pot of coffee sitting on a burner. The downside is that it can take awhile to get your coffee if there were a half a dozen people ahead of you. The upside was freshly ground, freshly prepared, stinking hot coffee every single time. Mmmm.

I’ve taken so much time describing the food here that I don’t have room to talk about any of this week’s travels. I’ll correct that tomorrow over my first Long Black of the day.

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WHAT I LEARNED TODAY

 I never knew why New Zealanders were referred to as Kiwis. I knew there was a kiwi fruit and a kiwi bird. But was it one of these or something else and which came first? Part 1 of what I learned today is that kiwi fruit came last. Prior to 1959 they were called Chinese gooseberries. New Zealanders fruit marketers sought to find some unique positioning around the fruit and began a campaign to call it kiwi fruit, basically to leverage off the New Zealander label. It stuck and the fruit became know around the world as kiwis.

The Kiwi bird is nocturnal, with similarities to both birds and mammals, having characteristics that suggest descendance directly from the dinosaur era. The aboriginal Maoris mythology held that the bird had special powers and was a gift from God. It’s veneration stuck after Europeans arrived and the kiwi bird came to symbolize the country’s special characteristic. Eventually New Zealanders adopted it as a label and are now know as Kiwis themselves.

What I learned today is why New Zealanders are referred to as Kiwis.

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QUESTION OF THE DAY

Today’s question might be considered frivolous by some but it’s intended to attract a serious discussion, sort of. The answer will be more interpretative and less absolute. The advantage will go to the good cooks of the group; which pretty much lets out my family. (Not you Mom. Everybody but you.) The question has been on my mind since Fiji and got inspired by this food column. Here’s the question.

Presume that while visiting Fiji 150 years ago, I get a telephone call from a nice local family. (I know. Presume it was invented then.) After the usual polite banter they say “Alan, come on over to our house. We’d like to have you for dinner.” As they prepared for my visit they consult a copy of the Betty Crocker for Lapsed Vegans cookbook. What would it say about cooking a 150 pound Canadian, say medium rare? What would the recipe look like? (Basically interested in temperature and time but any seasoning suggestions would be useful.)