Sure, you might turn up to find the lights off and the doors closed, but if you can catch it open for business, The Afghan Restaurant on Lincoln Road offers an unparalleled culinary experience. You can’t call a restaurant a hidden gem when it’s on one of Christchurch’s busiest roads. The Afghan Restaurant may be … Read more
A Madeleine Chapman guide to the best and worst of the change range. I once fell asleep at LAX while waiting for a flight and somebody stole my wallet. I made a sad face at check-in and was able to check my bag for free then had to survive a day in Boston and an … Read more
More than 70 stands giving away more than 350 whiskies sounds like a recipe for chaos. Instead, it’s a near-perfect day out. They came from all over Scotland: from the Highlands, the Lowlands, Islay and Campbeltown and plenty more besides. Further afield too – I tasted a whisky flavoured with sheep’s dung from Iceland, one … Read more
A tarte tatin is a classic for a reason: simple (you don’t have to make the pastry if you don’t want to), elegant and delicious to boot. I may have mentioned before that we live part way up a mountain. This has a significant impact on our growing season, making it shorter than it would … Read more
Ever-increasing varieties of zero-alcohol beers beckon the sober or sober-curious from the supermarket shelf. But are any of them any good? We investigate. Ah, non-alcoholic beer. If your immediate thought response to that sentence is “What’s the point?”, look, we don’t blame you. But The Spinoff is nothing if not brave: we go places others … Read more
Scary amounts of food are being dumped by the commercial food industry on a daily basis. In 2014, Katy Barfield decided to do something about it by founding Yume, an online B-to-B marketplace for surplus food. Here are five important points from her recent talk in Auckland. Three thousand cartons of Coco Pops. Nearly five … Read more
Dietary Requirements is The Spinoff’s monthly podcast in which we eat, drink and talk about it too, with special thanks to Freedom Farms. This month, we’re joined by Jos Ruffell of Garage Project and Sammy Akuthota of Satya to talk about their exciting new venture. In our first field trip of the year, the Dietary Requirements … Read more
From the tip of Farewell Spit to the very arse end of Stewart Island, there is one delicacy that unites Te Wai Pounamu: the humble green onion chip. But why? Alice Neville embarks on a quest for the true story behind this regional snacking quirk. I have many fond childhood memories of visiting my grandparents’ … Read more
Sure, the new wave of RTDs might have cool labels and no carbs or whatever, but for Sam Brooks, none come close to the perfection held within that little yellow can. RTDs are coming back, if they were ever really gone. I remember the halcyon days of getting drunk off Purple Goannas, off Taboos, even … Read more
New Zealanders throw away 295 million single-use cups per year. Alice Neville ponders our obsession with takeaway culture, and looks at what’s needed for consumers to change their behaviour. How many commuters did you see clutching single-use takeaway coffee cups on your way to work this morning? Or how many empty ones are strewn about … Read more
If you’re not the foraging type, fear not: supermarket berries will work just fine (but imagine how wholesome you’ll feel if you pick your own!) This is one of my favourite times of the year, when we pile the kids in the car and head east, over the hills to where the blackberries grow best. … Read more
Plant-based food producers ‘stigmatise and demonise’ traditional agriculture, according to Jones, but those working in the new industry say it should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat. NZ First minister Shane Jones’ suggestion that plant-based food must be “stopped in its tracks” has been labelled concerning, negligent and anti-competitive by proponents of the … Read more
Are you a time-poor urban apartment-dweller who’s put composting in the too-hard basket? Read on… About half of what Aucklanders chuck in their rubbish bins is actually compostable material. That means a whopping 90,000 tonnes of Auckland households’ food waste ends up in landfill each year. Why is that a problem? It breaks down without … Read more
The rise of ‘plant-based’ diets seems like a win for those who decry eating meat. But some vegan groups claim the halfway step of vegetarianism is ineffectual if you really care about animal cruelty, climate change, or your own personal health. An article in the Guardian last year asked “Why do people hate vegans?”, suggesting … Read more
Sam Brooks heads along to Meatstock 2020, and finds himself questioning the symbiotic relationship between meat-eating and machismo. As I entered Auckland’s ASB Showgrounds for the first day of Meatstock 2020, a girl was exiting. Trucker cap on, eyes hidden behind aviators, manicured fingers wrapped around a can, itself wrapped in a chilled cozy. One … Read more
We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Today, a bunch of us have a hoon on Burger King’s new chip butty. The United Kingdom’s contributions to world cuisine, like its contributions to the world in general (Morris dancing, Piers Morgan, colonialism etc), are for the most part … Read more
The cancellation of this weekend’s Lantern Festival isn’t the only knock-on effect from the novel coronavirus outbreak to reach Auckland, with the city’s Chinese restaurants reporting a decline in custom. The ban on inbound travel from China combined with overly cautious local diners avoiding their establishments has hit Auckland Chinese restaurateurs hard, with some even … Read more
Summer is the time for buying dollar bags at the dairy. It’s also the time for Madeleine Chapman to rank every single one of them. In a feeble attempt to pre-empt the outrage, I’d like to make some disclaimers. Firstly, the lollies were limited to those sold in dollar bags. Items sold individually (such as … Read more
This summer, Nestlé released two new flavours of Kiwi Onion Dip. Hayden Donnell, our nation’s leading Kiwi onion dip researcher, delivers the company an angry rebuke. In 2012, 81-year-old Cecilia Giménez started painting over a fresco of a scourged Christ in the Spanish city of Borja. In her mind, the creation by artist García Martínez … Read more
After a bite of schnitzel sends her running to the toilet, Julie Hill dives into the murky world of Britain’s favourite meat substitute. It was late in the evening and my stomach was empty. I was on my way home after a slightly depressing trip to the hospital, hungry but too weary to cook from … Read more
Got a glut of zucchini? Turn ’em into chips and they’ll be gone in a flash. It’s that time of year again when gardens are bursting at the seams with fresh produce, and if there’s one crop on which you can rely, it’s zucchini. I have three plants in my garden this year, and two … Read more
They’re ‘clean’, they’re ‘natural’, they’ll get you lit but not make you fat – or at least that’s the aim. Premixed spirit-based drinks have shed their low-brow reputation and are taking over a summer barbecue near you. But are they any good? The Spinoff finds out. For many years, RTDs had a terrible reputation: brightly … Read more
From foul combat snacks to forbidden cones and fruit-based sophistication, the most sought-after sugary snacks of his childhood still hold a special place in John Summers’ heart. Childhood is always summer in recollection, and so came with the hope of ice cream, of jandals slapping on dry pavement in the direction of the dairy. There … Read more
Finally, New Zealand is getting country-of-origin food labelling. But the recently released draft regulations are a missed opportunity to provide consumers with clarity around where their food comes from and how it’s produced, writes Hilary Pearson of Freedom Farms. It seems a bit laborious to rehash the already storied history of the Consumers’ Right to … Read more
Dietary Requirements is The Spinoff’s monthly podcast in which we eat, drink and talk about it too, with special thanks to Freedom Farms. This month, we’re joined by food writer Ginny Grant and a whole lot of babies for our first podcast of 2020. We’re back for 2020 and the Dietary Requirements whānau has magically expanded! … Read more
In the near decade since Sawmill Brewery’s new owners came on board, they’ve made some of the best beers in the country, won awards and watched their brewery burn down. And their former landlords at the Leigh Sawmill Cafe accuse them of acting unethically. Alice Neville reports from Matakana. Every Monday, when the Sawmill Brewery’s … Read more
House on Hood, which was criticised for promoting a deal on Corona beer with reference to the coronavirus, has discontinued the promotion after being contacted by Lion, which distributes Corona in New Zealand. A Hamilton bar’s social media promotion offering a deal on Corona beers as long as the deadly coronavirus continued to spread has … Read more
After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Cuba embarked on a rapid reorientation of its agricultural system to a self-sustaining, biointensive and essentially organic model. Nearly 30 years on, a Canterbury vegetable grower ponders whether Aotearoa could follow its lead. It’s November 2016, less than a week after the election of Donald Trump, and I’m … Read more
Our job as walkers of city streets is to continue frequenting gems like the soon-to-close Food Alley, writes Miriam Moore. Last week, my favourite Auckland food institution posted a plea for customers. In a video on its Instagram, Food Alley on Albert Street called for people to still visit, and included an explainer of how … Read more