Eating in New Zealand

For Chinese New Year 2009, instead of celebrating it quietly as my family usually does, every year, I decided to go with a friend to visit one of the places that does actually celebrate Chinese New Year, or CNY for short :)

The venue for this year’s main celebration was held in the Telstraclear events centre, based in Manukau city - a good 30 minutes drive away from City central. When we arrived there the atmosphere was great - lots of people, laughing and chatter, and - no parking spaces. After taking a look around to see where people ARE parking, we found ourselves a spot and beelined toward the food stalls :)

Understandably, most in the crowd are Asian and thus they are the main audience to which the food stalls are pitching towards. As the weather was good - a little bit too hot actually, but this is New Zealand, the country with a hole on top of our heads! - there were also a lot of families with small children and the bouncing castles took care of the active little ones.

The trend this year appears to be skewered foods; out of the 50 or so food stalls littered around the showgrounds, at least 15 served skewers of some sort, whether it be charcoal skewers, Malaysian satay skewers, Thai satay skewers, beef/lamb/pork skewers, even corn cob skewers (I recalled seeing one but didn’t see the actual stall) - and lets not forget the Japanese skewers.

Being enveloped from skewer smokes that is coming in all directions, I decided on the stall that had the most people waiting ;) It’s a crude but usually effective rule that works in for me in unfamiliar territories - when in doubt of what to eat, head towards the place with the most people! I believe this is also called the sheep mentality and seeing as I’m living in a land with a 3:1 ratio of sheep to humans, it’s probably a good name for any theory I come up with!

Although there weren’t that many people waiting in line for the lamb skewers (which was going at a rate of 4 skewers for $5 NZD), the amount of lamb skewers that could be charcoaled at one time was fairly limited. I had to wait for the second batch since the people in front of my bought $20 worth of lamb skewers…

After finally receiving my lot of skewers after a 15 minute wait, I dug in and realized the wait was well worth it! The meat was slightly crispy, yet still tender and the generous seasoning of salt, pepper and spices made for a great snack! If only there were a bowl of rice handy… I would’ve been done there and then!

However, the journalist and foodie in me urged me to not indulge my love for fried and generally unhealthy foods and soldier on towards the diverse range of food that is on offer here. Unfortunately it’s not that common for food markets to materialize during the year without good commercial reasons (such as well-known festivals like Diwali and CNY that lots of people celebrate), so whenever opportunities like today arise I do my best to try a little bit of everything.

The next item I had ended up being the pork rib soup I got from this sausage grilling place. It was average, that was all that I could say… seeing that they were grilling sausages like there was no tomorrow, I probably should have gotten sausages instead… :|

Another noteworthy stall is the one pictured above. Though old, he is still going strong with a fairly loud voice to boot, peddling his skewers of beef brisket. Unfortunately, his spirit was the only thing that was of quality, as the beef brisket skewer was way too oily and hard to chew. This skewer pales deeply in comparison to the lamb skewer I had prior, and perhaps my standard have been set too high from the previous skewer… sigh! If only every skewer tasted as good as that one ;)

Although I tasted a few more things thereafter, they got progressively worse from the beef brisket skewer. I believe that my stomach, having to deal with a DIVERSE range of food at the same time, may have something to do with it, but for the most part I didn’t end up having anything that was even worth mentioning. I even had to throw away most of the stuff before I could finish it because of the complaints my stomach were sending me after the first few sips/bites… which really disturbs me just because I always finish my food!

Overall though, celebrating CNY is about spending time with friends, family, and generally taking in the atmosphere that somehow seems that little bit extra special during a time like this, and being immersed in the throngs of people all gathered under the hot sun just to celebrate CNY, did it for me :) Happy Chinese New Year to all and may the year of the Ox bring you many fabulous dishes involving the ox (and other animals of course) on a wonderfully presented platter!

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