NZ Food

Our package tour includes 80% of our meals, so we had Chinese food all the time! The whole tour was conducted by a Chinese speaking Malaysian tour guide. I wonder if one can do a study of the Chinese restaurant names and link it to the number of years they have been in operation. These are the names of the Chinese restaurants we went to: JC Palace, Teochew Restaurant, Jade Palace Chinese Restaurant, Lakeside Restaurant, Mandarin Restaurant, Memories of Hong Kong Restaurant, Wong's Wok, etc. I'd like to guess that for the earlier established ones, they tend to use place names while the later ones are confident enough to use a person's name. Then again, we have yummy food from Happy's, Dumpling Inn (gone up in smoke during the terrible bush fire in 2003), Jimmy's Place, Timmy's Kitchen, Superior Peking Chinese Restaurant and the relatively cheaper Great Wall Chinese Restaurant (think it is closed now) in Canberra.

Our young tour guide's enthusiastic recommendations were that we should try the hokey pokey ice cream, fries and a fizzy drink called L&P. I'm not a big fan of the last 2 so I didn't seek them out till the last day. I had the ice cream for 2 consecutive days and couldn't get enough of it. It's really rich and creamy! I tried the fries at MacDonald's - not so great. But my friends let me try the fries they bought from KFC - those were really good! We also had Fish & Chips during lunch one day when we need to get our own lunch. I ordered a seafood basket and the mussels were really good! They didn't have that funny fishy taste and were fat and juicy. Normally I wouldn't eat mussels but those were GOOD!

I wasn't looking forward to returning home on the last night. It felt strange to be snacking after midnight. I had the salt and vinegar Bluebird potato chips and finally tasted L&P (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_&_Paeroa). I must say L&P is very nice! It is mild and not too fizzy like 7 Up or Sprite. Lastly, I also like the taste of Bell Tea. It is a bit different from Lipton but not as strong as Dilmah's. Unfortunately, the coffee bags they had in the hotels were all made in Australia so I'm not sure if there are any NZ brand coffee. ^.^