Storyline: Home to home westward
If you haven’t gotten the memo – food is rather expensive in New Zealand. At least for our Canadian dollar. It is not exactly a backpacker’s country. Couldn’t quite figure out how backpackers actually survive here – and there are so many of them. It is not a budget retiree country either. Unless you are very careful. Bread and jam sandwiches don’t suffice for ever.
Groceries:
We have been to most of the major cities and a few little towns in New Zealand and can say it: groceries here are often prohibitively expensive and some things just don’t make sense from our perspective. We may have preferences but we have no dietary restrictions and we eat (almost) everything, like it or not. But if you are on a diet, gluten free, Mediterranean or other, or you are up against texture and/or smell or prefer fresh fruits and vegetables, or want the food you are used to in your own country, you’d better come with thick wallet.
Yet, it is as in every other place. If you are local, if you have lived in an area for a while, you’ll find your own way, things that are cheaper and things that don’t make sense to buy on a regular basis, regardless your love for them. We found, for example, that one can get good local apples that are much cheaper than anything in Canada. Broccoli, carrots and some tomatoes, pumpkins are comparable in price. Fresh meat is often cheaper too, sometimes by far. For example, skinless boneless chicken breasts can be found for half of what we’d pay in Canada. One can also find relatively cheaper seafood, especially local species. However, most of the fruits and vegetables have quite steep prices. Mushrooms are from $13 to $19 a kilo for the cultivated white button type (compared to about $8 at home), and much more for portabellas. So, broccoli it was, with our bacon and eggs (double the price at home), wherever breakfast wasn’t provided. What was surprising was the price of avocados and kiwis. Way more expensive than in Canada (although we get ours primarily from the USA, Mexico and South America). We’d heard that millennials couldn’t afford but avocado sandwiches. My God, anywhere we saw an avocado sandwich it was over $20. All prices here in the NZ dollars, which is slightly lower than the Canadian, however adding conversion fees it comes to more or less the same.
Sometimes it makes sense to take out ready-to-eat foods from a grocery store. Filo pastries, meat pies and frittatas are very popular here. They are big, a full meal size and cheap. We have had spinach, mushrooms and feta or mushrooms and ham, or chicken, etc. for $2(filo) – $7(pie, frittata) a piece. These, together with some take out salad made some of our dinners. Take outs from grocery stores are in a great variety and can be your cheaper option to making your own meals from scratch. Our friend Slavka, who makes a variety of great filo pastries will be pleased to know that here down under, they are very popular. So is the Bulgarian feta that can be easily found here too.
Dining out:
For those who know us, we tend to share a single appetiser and main course, or a couple of appetisers and have no main. We prefer quality to quantity when it goes to exercising our budget on dining out. We love to sit somewhere for the ambience, the atmosphere, the views – even if we just have a glass of wine and share an appetizer. So we often sit somewhere more for the experience than for a filling meal. And if we want to eat a bit more, we usually find a place a little away from the most travelled streets and squares, and have late lunch as our main meal for the day. Lunches in may countries are cheaper than dinners and NZ is no exception.
In NZ we wanted to try all kinds of local food. We did and we will really miss the fresh seafood so unique and tasty as nowhere else we’ve been. And we managed to find quality seafood at reasonable prices. Where we remember we have included here the names of the restaurants and pubs we tried, so if you are in the area and have similar taste and attitude, we highly recommend them.
Our first experience with ceviche in Auckland for example was very good, so we kept trying different styles. We loved the green-lipped mussels, and had them wherever the prices weren’t too high.
In Auckland, we found great variety of restaurants, many quite affordable, as long as one has the right attitude (I mean does not want fish and chips or burgers around the waterfront or other “I can only eat this” specials). Yes, for some reasons fish & chips and burgers at prime locations are quite expensive. As is steak and many other mains.
We sat a few times on the harbourfront in Wynyard trying local seafood. We loved the freshness of it. Often, we shared 2 appetisers, the size of a main meal each, and wine and beer for $6 a glass/bottle/pint. As in many other countries, it is cheaper if you take out from a place or stand at a bar than be seated. We found a variety of cheap, organic take away burgers on the harbourfront in Wellington (you just have to use the benches around for your lunch).
Thanks to Slavka, who reminded us to try the NZ green-lipped mussels in Wellington, we had a really good experience in the Belgian pub (Leuven Belgium Beer Café) with the cheapest and freshest one kilo of them with chips/French fries, Flemish style ($24 NZ for a kilo was pretty good, as we’ve seen higher price for about 6 mussels elsewhere) accompanied by a bottle of not so inexpensive Belgian Kwak beer (our mistake…it was $14 for 330ml!!!-A). The portions in this pub were humongous. We shared the mussels, sold as an appetiser, and were completely full. I can’t see having a main after that. I think this was the biggest complaint on trip advisor – the huge portions one couldn’t finish. In Wellington too, one could find affordable options.
We had a late lunch at JJ Murphy and Co. on Cuba street for $12 each, and were happy with it.
And if you are a fish & chips person, visit the Thorndon Chippery for a fresh fish and several varieties of chips.
In Picton we shared lamb at The Thirsty Pig, and green mussels again at Oxley’s Rock Café, and took out freshly made pies and my stolen quiche from the Village Bakkerij. Here I finally decided to try the uber expensive soup (at Le Café). It was fish soup, so I thought for the $16 it would be close to bouillabaisse. Alas there was almost no fish, but lots of water. Soup anywhere we went in NZ did not make sense. From $13 in a cheap place to $23+ it has to be the highest profit-margin meal. It is water for God’s sake! We had lamb biriyani with rice and naan for $15, we had other main dishes for under $15, yet soup?!
I really regret the missed opportunity in Kaikoura. Judy, our B&B host, told us about the Seafood BBQ Kiosk near the Point Kean Viewpoint. It was a great roadside place to try seafood chowder. At $6 a huge bowl, one couldn’t pass on it. They also had bbq’d scallops for the same price. Unfortunately, we didn’t have cash with us on the hike and they don’t accept foreign credit or debit cards. We thought we’d return the next day, however a deluge prevented us from venturing on such a hike (about 6 km from the train station where we were to leave for Christchurch that day). We shared a seafood platter for lunch at Pier Hotel that day and had take out from the grocery store for dinner.
In Queenstown on a pedestrian street away from the water we found a great place with the best Bluff oysters! (The Ballarat Trading Co). The freshest oysters we’ve ever had for a great price. At about $2.50 per oyster they were less than half the price of any others we had seen. We only tried it on our last evening. Wish we’d tried this place on our first stay there.
However, we’d lunched for under $15 at Speight’s Ale House, where for the first and last time I tried seafood chowder. It was delicious. The two pubs nearby looked very busy with the younger crowd and we found out that they offer beer for $5 between certain hours.
In Christchurch we sat in the main Cathedral Square area over a glass of sangria/beer and shared ceviche and scallop appetisers, just to experience the ambiance there.
We also twice visited the Two Fat Indians restaurant, where the lunch prices were under $15 for a portion big enough to share. The price of drinks was good too.
We also managed to try NZ lamb and venison at our Milford Sound Lodge dinner, which was part of the package, so we had a 2-course meal each there.
In Dunedin we only sat an evening for a glass of wine and shared veggie dish plus scallop bruschetta at Vault 21 in the city centre’s Octagon. Next day we ate in cafés.
And how did we survive Mt Cook? There are a few uber expensive places in the uber expensive Hermitage hotel.
We are glad we booked the room with breakfast included, because otherwise it would have been way too expensive and it was the only place, unless you carry your own. The breakfast buffet was served at the Hermitage hotel, to which we were shuttled. The buffet was huge, with lots of variety and we ate 3 times more that we’d eat otherwise. But this kept us full for the day.
In the evening we dined in the Chamois Bar & Grill in the Lodge where we stayed. It is open only for dinner and is a self-serve place which keeps the cost down. We had lovely view of the mountains and shared a salmon pizza the first night, and smoked chicken salad the second. It was delicious!
The breakfast in B&Bs is 1960s-style (in our experience). With small exceptions, bread (toast it if you wish) with butter and jams is the classic. Cereal and milk are available too. But nothing salty. Some places had also yogurt (sweetened) and fruits or fruit salad. Our Wellington hosts were really great with the cappuccinos and espressos, croissants and freshly baked cookies. Fruits, cereals and milk were available too, as was the classic toast, butter and jam, but we preferred the croissants. The overall breakfast (in cafés and restaurants too, excluding the ever-growing Asian cuisine) reminded me of my childhood vacations on the Black Sea. Bread, butter and jam it is. But we also had slices of cheese, brined feta-style cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers and some kind of salami. Not so much here. The price of toast, butter and jam, which is the cheapest breakfast in restaurants/cafes we saw was between $11 to $13. Talk about profit.
The sugar police have not come here, unfortunately. Everything an ordinary person can afford is either heavily sweetened or heavily breaded, often both. Pasta, bread or pizza, wine and cheese can be found in the affordable range. Jamie Oliver has not been commissioned here, I guess.
So why in this green, productive country, are food process so high? It comes down to basic economics and the laws of supply and demand. Fresh, tasty New Zealand produce is in high demand and commands high prices in China and other Asian countries. And with the wealth explosion there, demand has only increased. High demand and limited supply have resulted in an upwards pressure on export prices. And why sell domestically for less than you can sell in the export market? Domestic prices have therefore risen in lock-step with the world price. In one 2017 article we read, the price of 500g of local New Zealand butter was higher here than that of imported French butter. Go figure.
And so, how to survive New Zealand food sticker shock? Take out prepared foods from grocery stores. Even in a small place like Kaikoura, the variety of take out food is great and it is probably your cheapest option. If you want to dine out – find where the local folks go. In touristy places like Queenstown, look for line-ups. There were a few popular places to take out on the main drag that always had huge crowds. Then there’s always bread and jam…
Oh, and don’t eat out on public holidays. There’s a 15 to 20% surcharge.
Great tips! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for stopping by