What to eat in New Zealand: Typical foods to try and where to find them
New Zealand food can be great — but you need to know where to find the good stuff.
Photo by Miles Holden
New Zealand food stands out thanks to the quality of our produce — we grow and harvest our own meat, seafood, dairy, and produce. We might not have the most original dishes, but we will have the best ingredients.
It wasn’t always like this.
A British colonial legacy lumped us with grease-heavy pub fare like fish and chips, and plain meals of meat and potatoes — hardly haute cuisine.
Growing up, ‘meat and two veg’ was the standard dinner in our family, with beef, pork or venison from our farm alongside boiled potatoes or steamed cabbage.
Fortunately, New Zealand food has come a long way.
Today, New Zealand food culture is influenced by traditions from across the Pacific, Asia, and Europe. More New Zealand chefs are looking to answer the question “what is New Zealand cuisine?”
Many menus now celebrate the bounty of ingredients harvested, gathered, and foraged from the rich soils and coastlines of both islands.
You can expect to eat things like wild-shot deer, oysters pulled from the sea earlier that day, and fruit gathered from sunny orchards around the country.
If you want to explore New Zealand food, I recommend starting with these dishes. Where I can, I’ve included restaurant recommendations, because a good meal or two can really make a trip.
A snapshot of food culture in New Zealand
Typical New Zealand meals
For breakfast, most New Zealanders will eat a simple meal of cereal or toast. We don’t tend to have a big cooked breakfast, except on weekends when eggs benedict is the most popular brunch order in cafes.
We do take coffee seriously though, so a flat white is usually an important part of our mornings.
For lunch, most people will have sandwiches, a salad, or a pie grabbed from a bakery or service station. You can find filled rolls and pastries at bakeries in almost every shopping centre in New Zealand.
Cafe and bakery culture is strong throughout New Zealand, and you can almost always find somewhere to get a quick bite around lunchtime.
Dinner is typically the largest meal of the day.
Fish and chips used to be a staple New Zealand takeaway, but these days that’s more a summer holiday tradition when spending time in a small beach town. In Auckland at least, takeaways are more likely to be a good pad thai or curry, or an Italian-style pizza.
This post from Kind of a Big Deal sums up New Zealand cafe culture:
What food is New Zealand known for?
Traditional New Zealand food includes high-quality lamb and abundant seafood, like green-lipped mussels and Bluff oysters,
New Zealand offers a range of iconic dishes such as pavlova, hāngī (a Māori earth-oven-cooked feast), and kumara (sweet potato). Popular treats include hokey pokey ice cream and Whittaker’s chocolate.
What is New Zealand’s national food?
New Zealand doesn't have a single national food in the same way that some countries do, but if there were one dish that could be considered quintessentially ours, it would likely be pavlova.
This iconic dessert, a meringue-based creation topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit, holds a special place in New Zealand's culinary culture.
It's often enjoyed during holidays and gatherings and has sparked friendly debates with Australia over its origin, although New Zealanders passionately claim it as their own.
What is traditional New Zealand cuisine?
Traditional New Zealand dishes look more like a list of ingredients rather than stand alone dishes — lamb, beef, pork and venison, salmon, crayfish, oysters, whitebait, mussels, scallops, kumara (sweet potato), kiwifruit, and so on — and chefs of today honour this simplicity and devotion to provenance.
This is what’s at the heart of New Zealand food culture; simple things, well done.
Māori people were traditionally hunters, gatherers and crop farmers. They harvested food from the forests, seas, and rivers of Aotearoa, so it makes sense that these foods and practices influence what we eat now in New Zealand.
Whether you're dining at a fine restaurant in Queenstown, enjoying a quick bite from a market stall, or attending a traditional Māori hāngī, New Zealand's cuisine offers fresh, innovative, and high-quality experiences.
If you’re wondering what dishes to try while in New Zealand, here are some of the traditional meals and ingredients to hunt down.
My tips for foodies
New Zealand’s cafes are really good, often with a menu and what we call ‘cabinet food’ with sandwiches, cakes, and scones. Don’t overlook the cakes on offer, with New Zealand classics like ginger crunch.
If you love food, or you have someone at home who likes cooking, the Edmonds New Zealand Cookbook makes a great souvenir to buy, with lots of classic New Zealand recipes.
Eating out in New Zealand can get expensive, so try First Table as a way of dining in great restaurants for less.
Must-try New Zealand foods and where you can find them
1. Hāngī
Ada’s take on hāngī — photo courtesy of Ada
Hāngī is a traditional Maori method of cooking food underground using heated stones.
It often includes meats like lamb, pork, and chicken, along with vegetables like kūmara (a sweet potato brought to New Zealand by early Māori settlers).
Where to try hāngī: At Ada in Grey Lynn, a top Auckland restaurant, you can try hāngī pork belly with potato mousse, crispy onions, cured egg yolk, chive oil, or hangi potatoes with chèvre, truffle oil and porcini soil.
2. Pāua
Photo courtesy of Mr Morris
Pāua, also known as abalone, are sea snails with striking, iridescent shells.
Their shells are often used in traditional Māori art and jewellery due to their beauty.
The meat of the pāua is a New Zealand delicacy with a slightly salty flavour and a tender, almost gelatinous texture.
Pāua can be sliced thinly and enjoyed raw as sashimi or lightly seared, similar to scallops.
Where to try pāua: Try a farmed baby Pāua crumpet with fermented peanut butter and celery leaf mayonaise at Ahi, Ben Bayly’s restaurant in Commercial Bay in downtown Auckland.
Pāua, ginger, and seaweed provides a decadent snack at the elevated bistro Mr Morris in Central Auckland.
A note on sustainability: Due to concerns about overfishing, Pāua populations are carefully managed in New Zealand. There are strict regulations regarding the size and quantity of paua that can be harvested, along with seasonal restrictions to ensure its sustainability.
Farmed Pāua is considered the most sustainable option.
2. New Zealand lamb
Photo courtesy of Hello Beasty
New Zealand is renowned for its high-quality lamb.
The country has some of the best conditions in the world for raising sheep, with lush pastures and a temperate climate. Most New Zealand lamb is grass-fed, which contributes to its taste and tenderness.
Try New Zealand lamb as a roast, in a stew, or as part of a traditional Kiwi meat pie.
For something a little different, try the slow-cooked New Zealand lamb in Sichuan sauce at Hello Beasty, a restaurant in the Viaduct Harbour in Auckland.
Hello Beasty serves East Asian fusion cuisine. Influences include Japanese, Chinese, and Korean cuisine, resulting in a menu with bold, creative flavours.
Or, for something more elaborate, head to Amisfield restaurant.
Amisfield is one of Queenstown’s best restaurants, and chef Vaughan Mabee serves lamb tails as part of his tasting menu celebrating New Zealand culture.
4. Kūmara
Also known as sweet potato, kūmara is a staple in New Zealand cuisine. It's often roasted, mashed, or made into fries.
kingi is a sustainable seafood restaurant in Britomart. As well as a whole gamut of seafood options, there’s a main dish of wood-roasted kūmara, sourced from Kaipara. They also feature a kūmara sourdough.
At Homeland, you can try a dish of wood-roasted kūmara served with pesto made from kawakawa, a native plant.
You’ll see kumara as an accompaniement or side dish for many meat-focused meals. For example, Ki Māha restaurant on Waiheke Island serves roasted duck breast with orange kūmara purée.
5. Crayfish
Crayfish, or "kōura" in the Māori language, is a quintessential New Zealand food.
Testament to the coastal lifestyle in New Zealand, crayfish are often caught by hobby divers and served with a drizzle of garlic butter or a splash of lemon juice.
If you don’t plan on foraging crayfish for yourself, you can try them at one of the seafood shacks along coastal highways around New Zealand.
Nin's Bin is an iconic seafood stop located in Kaikoura, a coastal town in the South Island.
The rustic caravan, perched between the highway and the waves, is renowned for serving some of the freshest crayfish in the region. Nin’s Bin is a third generation family business, which has been catching and cook crayfish for around 40 years.
Crayfish are caught out the front of the caravan early each morning, and served simply with fresh lemon and garlic butter.
The name Kaikōura means “eat crayfish”— kai is food and kōura crayfish.
This name refers to the story of Tama ki te Raki who stopped and had a meal of crayfish in Kaikōura, while journeying around the South Island looking for his three runaway wives.
6. Green-lipped mussels
New Zealand's coastline offers an abundance of seafood, and green-lipped mussels are a classic dish.
The Marlborough region at the top of the South Island is famous for producing green-lipped mussels — the small town of Havelock dubs itself “the Greenshell Mussel capital of the world".
Try Marlborough’s mussels at the Mussel Pot in Havelock, a quirky little restaurant that has been serving this local delicacy for decades.
Another place to try green lipped mussels is The Mussel Inn in Golden Bay.
The community oriented Inn was established 30 years ago, with a single-minded vision of creating a welcoming space for people to gather and enjoy good food and music.
Today, The Mussel Inn is a stalwart of Golden Bay. Swinging by for a meal and music is one of the best things to do in Golden Bay, and a surefire way to experience local culture.
The pub is simple but cosy, the menu simple but delicious.
Feast on mussels and garlic bread, or enjoy dishes made with vegetables grown in their own garden, while you soak up the atmosphere and make plans to move to Golden Bay.
Whitebait fritters
One thing I refuse to add to this list, but that appears in many other articles about traditional New Zealand food, is whitebait fritters. Whitebait, or inanga in Maori, are immature fish that travel in schools up rivers in New Zealand.
Four of the five species of whitebait are endangered.
That means that this local ‘delicacy’ is actually made up of endangered fish. Whitebait are at such high risk of extinction some estimates say they could be gone completely by 2034.
So please, don’t support the industry and avoid whitebait fritters.
7. Maori fry bread
Photo by Onslow
Fried bread — also called fry bread, or parāoa parai — is a much-loved Māori delicacy.
It’s often served at Matariki celebrations or other events, to go along with a hangi, or goes just as well with a Sunday roast.
Fried bread is crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, a little like a doughnut.
The primary ingredients for fried bread are flour, water, sugar, and a leavening agent. Round or squares of dough are cooked in a hot frying pan or on a griddle with a small amount of oil.
Ada restaurant in Grey Lynn serves up an incredible version of fried bread. Their take on it — rēwena fried bread — uses sourdough to elevate the classic fried bread.
You can order simple rēwena fried bread with duck fat, or something more fancy, like rēwena fried bread with local oyster mushroom and blue cheese.
Another epic spot to try fried bread is Onslow, a restaurant by Josh Emett.
Here, fried bread falls under the ‘treat’ category and comes with six month aged cheddar and honey.
8. Mānuka honey
Renowned for its medicinal properties, mānuka honey is produced by bees that forage on the native mānuka tree. It's delicious on toast or used as a sweetener in various dishes.
When I was growing up, my father kept bee hives on our farm in the Coromandel. We always had pots (and often barrels) of honey, and it served as more than just a topping for our toast.
Any time we had a burn, a scrape, or other injury, my father would slather us mānuka honey.
The mānuka has other uses in New Zealand cuisine, too.
The wood chips of manuka tree are used to add flavour when smoking food, and the leaves can also be used for tea.
9. Kina
Also known as sea urchin, kina is a delicacy best enjoyed fresh with a squeeze of lemon. It has a briny, oceanic flavour.
As New Zealand’s waters are overfished and populations of other sea creatures that would normally prey on kina, like snapper and crayfish, decline, kina colonies are booming.
This is bad news for marine eco-systems, but means that you can’t take too many kina from the water — in fact, you’re probably doing the ocean a favour.
At some beaches in Northland, kina are so popular beaches have dedicated bins for their shells.
At kingi, you can eat kina on toast, with pancetta.
In Arrowtown, dine at Aosta and you can try kina pappardelle (the pasta is made with kina roe) with crispy leeks and hen’s yolk — you can even add paua for more decadence.
This is allegedly the only dish that permanently resides on the menu, because taking it off would cause outrage among our locals.
10. Truffles
Photo by Andiamo
Photo by Andiamo
Did you know New Zealand grows truffles? New Zealand has at least 30 truffière, or truffle growing properties dotted around the country.
New Zealand truffles are seasonal produce. Fresh truffles are typically available between June and September, depending on the variety.
During the winter months, various Auckland restaurants add truffles to their menus in creative ways.
Keep an eye out for Onslow’s twice-baked truffle soufflé, served with gruyere, hazelnut and truffle cream. Onslow sources truffles locally from George’s Truffles in Riwaka.
Italian restaurant Andiamo, in the central neighbourhood of Herne Bay, has a decadent take on mac and cheese. Their macaroni and cheese with truffle is a decadent, comforting, and complex dish.
You can also add fresh shavings of locally-sourced truffle to any dish at Andiamo for $10 per gram. The chef recommends adding the seasonal delicacy to the cacio e pepe fusilli, or the bruschetta of whipped ricotta, grilled butternut, pomegranate and amaranth.
11. Flat white
The flat white is New Zealand’s most popular coffee order.
This espresso-based coffee is known for its creamy texture and smooth taste. While there is some debate about its origins, it is believed to have been invented in either Australia or New Zealand.
Either way, the flat white is a huge part of New Zealand coffee culture, and you’ll see it on the menu at every cafe.
Cafes in New Zealand are consistently good, but if you want to try some local favourites, check out Bestie Cafe on Karangahape Road in Auckland, or Orphan’s Kitchen in Ponsonby.
12. New Zealand game meats
New Zealand has an unfortunate pest problem. Our wildest places are overrun with introduced animals like deer, rabbits, pigs, and even wallabies.
Because these animals are so abundant, and cause so much damage to our native ecosystems, hunting is a popular past time in New Zealand. And with hunting comes game meat.
Wild venison, particularly from red deer, is widely available in New Zealand. It's lean and has a rich, gamey flavour.
Wild boar meat is another game meat that's commonly hunted and enjoyed in New Zealand. It's often used in sausages, burgers, and stews.
Ducks and rabbits are other common targets for hunters, as are chamois and Himalayan tahr. Wallabies are less popular for human consumption, but are becoming a common source of pet food.
One of the best places to try wild meat is Ben Bayly’s restaurant Ahi (which means fire in te reo Māori), located in the Commercial Bay precinct in downtown Auckland.
On the menu are wild-shot red deer and wallaby tartare, made with meat from wild wallabies hunted in the South Island.
Another exellent place to try New Zealand meat is Cazador, a family owned and operated restauratn serving wild, organic, and free range ingredients. The meat on their menus is sourced from New Zealand hunters and includes dishes like grilled duck hearts and braised boar shoulder.
You can also shop their deli charcuterie, with options like game salami, heritage pork lonzo, and game terrine.
13. Oysters
The Oyster Inn on Waiheke Island
New Zealand is renowned for oysters. The Bluff oyster is one of the most sought-after varieties.
Bluff is a town at the very bottom of the South Island. Bluff oysters are celebrated for their distinctive flavour and tender texture. They are known for their briny, slightly sweet taste.
The Bluff oyster season runs from March to August, with the peak of flavour and quality occurring in April and May.
Bluff isn’t the only place that produces oysters, though.
Where to try New Zealand oysters: In Central Auckland, you can try oysters from all over New Zealand at Depot.
The lively, industrial-chic restaurant by TV chef Al Brown has an oyster bar, where you can sample oysters from Waiheke Island, the Coromandel, or Kerikeri in Northland.
Each location offers oysters with slightly different finishes — see if you can tell the difference between a sweet, creamy, or briny finish.
You can try oysters at the legendary Oyster Inn on Waiheke Island. This restaurant sources their oysters from Te Matuku Oysters who harvest the shellfish from pristine waters on the opposite side of the island.
14. The New Zealand meat pie
The humble meat pie is one of New Zealand’s most popular foods.
Traditionally featuring beef and mutton, it has evolved to encompass an array of meat fillings, including lamb, pork, chicken, and even game meats.
Pies are a quick and easy meal in New Zealand — you can grab them from bakeries, service stations, or cafes as an on the go lunch. They’re famous for having an absurd amount of fat in them. With flaky golden pastries and saucy fillings, our pies are pure comfort.
The classic Kiwi meat pie boasts a flaky pastry crust, but there are regional variations and toppings, including puff pastry and mashed potatoes. Pies are best accompanied with a dollop of tomato sauce or ketchup.
New Zealanders take pies so seriously there are Supreme Pie Awards every year.
Patrick’s Pies Gold Star Bakery in Tauranga is the reigning champion, thanks to an outstanding Roast Duck, Onion and Mushroom pie.
Vegetarians and vegans can still enjoy pies. I enjoy the faux meat pies from Tart Bakery, one of Auckland’s best bakeries, and Z Energy Petrol Stations typically stock a whole range of vegan pies if you’re on a road trip.
15. Fresh fruit
Thanks to New Zealand’s range of climates, from the sub tropical north to the dry climes of Otago, means we grow a fantastic variety of fruit.
We export fruit all over the world — when I was in Arctic Norway, I came across New Zealand apples in a small supermarket.
Tasting New Zealand fruit straight from the source is much more delicious.
If you want to have a quintessential New Zealand experience, keep an eye out for ‘Pick Your Own’ signs on the side of the road. Many orchards and growers in New Zealand invite people to do exactly that — come in and pick your own fruit.
You can pick your own blueberries, peaches, nectarines, mandarins, or even cherries in Otago.
If you don’t want to spend hours wandering orchard rows, you can find seasonal fruit in New Zealand supermarkets. Thanks to the diverse climates around the country, you can find many different stone fruit, apples, and other New Zealand grown fruit.
My favourites are cherries, which are in season only from late December to late January. For this fleeting month, you’ll see punnets crammed with the shiny dark fruit stacked in supermarkets around the country.
I buy them by the kilogram, and eat them within days — it sounds excessive, but just as quickly as the cherries arrive, they’re gone again.
A classic seasonal New Zealand fruit is the feijoa, native to South America but grown extensively in New Zealand.
Feijoas have a unique taste that's a mix of pineapple and guava. Feijoas grow abundantly in New Zealand from April through to June, often littering footpaths where laden shrubs have dropped them from hedgerows.
So many people have feijoa trees in their gardens, that it’s rare to buy them. People tend to give them away, or sell them on the side of the road for a few dollars a bag.
Feijoas are so beloved in New Zealand, that they almost surpass kiwifruit in terms of how iconic they are.
16. The Southland cheese roll
The Southland cheese roll is a beloved New Zealand snack that originated in the Southland region on the South Island. These cheese rolls are fondly referred to as ‘Southland sushi’.
The rolls are made from grated cheese and various seasonings (such as onion soup mix, mustard, and cayenne pepper) rolled up in a slice of white bread, which is then toasted until the cheese is melted and the roll is crispy.
These cheese rolls are often served hot, making them a comforting and flavourful treat, especially during chilly Southland winters.
You’ll find Southland cheese rolls in many cafes and bakeries in the lower half of the South Island.
For a more elevated take on the cheese roll, head to Little Aosta in Arrowtown. This restaurant, masterminded by Ben Bayly of Ahi in Auckland, dishes up a fried Southland cheese roll with mozzarella.
You can also try Southland cheese rolls on Ponsonby Road in Auckland, at the delightful Orphan’s Kitchen cafe.
Of course, as well as having lots of outstanding food, New Zealand produces excellent wine. Some of the best regions for indulging in New Zealand wine include:
Martinborough — stop by this wine town near Wellington to sample savoury pinot noirs and enjoy epic vineyard platters in the sunshine.
Waiheke Island — The vineyards on Waiheke are famous for Bordeaux varietals and for having luscious settings, some with sea views.
Central Otago — You can find dozens of wineries near Queenstown in the Gibbston region, and even more scattered around Wanaka. Go on a wine tour or cycle between vineyards in stunning Central Otago landscapes.
Thanks for reading this far! I hope you found some inspiration for foods to try on your New Zealand trip.
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