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
Looking back on 10 years of wild, weird and wonderful food stories in Aotearoa. It’s been a hell of a decade for food here in New Zealand. Sure, there have been tedious trends aplenty – the rise of bloody kale, bloody coconut oil, bloody poké bowls – but the following list is not about fads; … Read more
For some, it symbolises the very backbone of New Zealand’s food culture. But can Kiwi onion dip survive after the factory that makes reduced cream is shut down? The Australian factory that makes Nestlé reduced cream, an integral ingredient in Kiwi onion dip, is shutting down, casting a shadow over the future of the New … 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 and Fine Wine Delivery Co. This month on Dietary Requirements, we are joined in the studio by an extremely special guest: Rosemary Mount (née Dempsey), the legend who invented Kiwi onion dip. We learn about … Read more
After a harrowing experience in a Countdown, Hayden Donnell calls for a moratorium on all classic New Zealand snack mash-ups. For a long time, New Zealand has been suffering from a sickness. It started as a slow creep. A flare-up here and there, easily dismissed; nothing much to worry about. Over time the illness has spread … Read more
Remember staying up extra late, one hand hovering nervously over the remote in case of footsteps, waiting to catch a tantalising glimpse of nudity on TV? You were not alone. An anonymous panel revisits the golden era of SKY 1 soft porn. In the years before broadband internet and personal devices, New Zealand teenagers had … Read more
Who invented Kiwi Onion Dip, and why isn’t there a gold statue of that person on top of Mt Cook? Hayden Donnell goes on a wildly emotional search for an unheralded New Zealand genius, the inspiration for his Get It To Te Papa series The woman on the other end of the phone line sounded … Read more