Takeaways

We've been pretty disappointed with the food in restaurants here so far.  There are very few chain restaurants, and the ones we've gone to have had consistently poor service and strange food.  It just isn't like the experience of eating at a restaurant in the states at all.

It seems like on NZ television, they have a reality show for everything.  We've recently become keen on watching The Kitchen Job.  It's about a restaurant man from America, that has come to NZ to help restaurants that are rapidly losing money and customers.  He basically goes in there, tries the food, tell them it's terrible, helps them create a new menu, makes over the place, and then has a trial run with a food critic.  He comes back a month later to see if they've made progress, and that's it.  It's entertaining because they argue a lot on the show, and it has made going to restaurants and cafes even harder now; each time we're there, I assess it as if I were the restaurant man on the show!

There are several solutions to eating in a restaurant though, when not wanting to cook.  Of course there's pizza, and even Thai delivery available.  But we've noticed throughout our travels that takeaways are very popular to the kiwis.  Takeaways are the NZ version of good-but-bad-for-you fast food.  Walking into a takeaway, you have so many options of the things you want fried up to take home.  The most popular is fish and chips, and you order the pieces of fish you want and scoops of fries.  But they also deep fry hot dogs, mussels, pineapples, donuts, paua, and more than I can even remember.  You place your order at the counter, wait a bit, and it is presented to you, triple wrapped in newsprint.  By the time you open it, at least two of the layers are soaked through with residual grease, and there's a big ol' pile of fried food for your dinner delight...

We rarely eat at the takeaway (so unhealthy!), but you can smell them a mile away.  It's like a nightly fish fry!!!  Not quite American fare, but fun to experience anyways!