Food and wine

Being non-meat eaters, even before we left the UK we knew that NZ was not the ideal destination. As to be expected, the eating experience was mixed.

Pies, and to a lesser extent chips, were the big “eat on the go” in NZ; and, as you might imagine, most of those pies contained meat. An alternative was quiches, but while they may not have contained meat, they were very thick and doubtless contained lots of egg, making them an unhealthy regular eat. Unlike in the UK where, in the past fifteen years, there’s been an explosion in pre-packed sandwiches leading to so much choice, sandwich choice in NZ was very limited. Eating on the go was quite a challenge.

However, we did find places that had a range of vegetarian dishes and the Queenstown area was good, possibly helped by the greater number of visitors to the district. We found The Tap in Arrowtown and the Surreal Bar and Restaurant in Queenstown good.

 

One thing you will need to be prepared for, compared to the UK, is slow service. Kiwi’s will probably say “What’s the rush?” but we did find it frustrating at times when the service - especially the drinks service - was extraordinarily slow.

Naturally, the only wines we came across throughout our travels were NZ wines, but who would want anything else?