New Zealand

🇳🇿New Zealand

Afghan Biscuit

Afghan

Dense cocoa and cornflake biscuit topped with chocolate icing and a walnut half.

🇦🇺Australia

Anzac Biscuits

Anzac Bikkies

Sweet oat biscuits with coconut, made without eggs, originally sent to soldiers in WWI, now an ANZAC Day tradition, chewy texture with good golden color and coconut flavor.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Asparagus Rolls

Tinned asparagus spears rolled up in buttered white bread with crusts removed — the morsel-plate staple of New Zealand parties, races and morning teas.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Bacon and Egg Pie

Whole eggs cracked into a puff pastry case with bacon and peas, baked flat and cut into squares.

🇳🇿Southland, New Zealand

Bluff Oysters

Wild dredge oysters from Foveaux Strait, larger, meatier and stronger-flavoured than farmed Pacific oysters.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Boil-Up

Pork bones or brisket boiled with pūhā, watercress, potato and kūmara, with flour dumplings dropped in near the end.

🇳🇿Southland, New Zealand

Cheese Roll

White bread spread with a mixture of grated cheese, onion soup mix and evaporated milk, rolled up and grilled until molten.

🇦🇺Australia

Chocolate Crackles

Rice bubbles mixed with chocolate and copha, party favorite for kids, good chocolate coating with crispy texture and not too greasy, an Australian children's party icon.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Chocolate Fish

Pink or white marshmallow moulded into a fish shape and coated in milk chocolate.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Colonial Goose

Boned leg of lamb stuffed with breadcrumbs, apricot and herbs, marinated and roasted to stand in for a goose.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Crayfish

Kōura

Spiny rock lobster caught around the Kaikōura and Northland coasts, sold cooked whole from roadside caravans.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Custard Square

Thick set vanilla custard between two sheets of flaky pastry, topped with white icing and cut into blocks.

🇦🇺Australia

Fairy Bread

Fairy bread is buttered white bread covered with colourful hundreds and thousands, cut into triangles for children’s parties.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Feijoa

Green egg-shaped fruit with a scented, granular flesh, ripening in autumn and famously dropped on neighbours' doorsteps.

🇬🇧Gibraltar, United Kingdom

Fish and Chips

Battered white fish — cod, haddock or plaice — deep-fried to order with thick-cut chips, salt and malt vinegar, wrapped in paper.

🇦🇺Australia

Flat White

Australia's greatest culinary export: espresso with steamed milk and thin layer of microfoam, higher coffee ratio than latte, originated in 1980s, a legendary coffee icon.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Fry Bread

Parāoa parai

Yeasted dough flattened and shallow-fried until puffed and golden, eaten with butter, golden syrup or a filling.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Ginger Crunch

Two-tier bakery square: a short, buttery ginger shortbread base under a hot-set golden-syrup icing, cut into small squares.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Green-Lipped Mussels

Kuku

Large mussels with a distinctive green shell lip, farmed on ropes in the Marlborough Sounds and Coromandel.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Hokey Pokey Ice Cream

Hokey pokey

Vanilla ice cream studded with lumps of golden honeycomb toffee that stay crunchy in the freezer.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Hokey Pokey Toffee

Hokey pokey

Golden syrup and sugar boiled to a hard crack, aerated with baking soda so it foams up into a brittle honeycomb.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Horopito

Leaves of the native pepper tree, dried and used as a hot, resinous seasoning with a slow-building burn.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Huhu Grubs

Fat white larvae of the huhu beetle, dug from rotting logs; a Māori bush-food delicacy traditionally eaten raw, tasting to most palates like peanut butter crossed with chicken skin.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Hāngī

Meat, kūmara, potato and pumpkin lowered in baskets onto fire-heated stones in a pit, covered with wet sacking and earth and steamed for hours.

🇦🇺Australia

Jaffas

Chocolate centre with hard orange-flavoured red shell, cinema classic since 1931, good orange flavour with crisp shell and fresh chocolate, an Australian nostalgic icon.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Jelly Slice

Chilled three-layer slice: crushed-biscuit base, a middle of lemon jelly whipped with condensed milk, and a top of set orange or strawberry jelly — the Kiwi answer to the tray-bake.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Jelly Tip Ice Cream

Tip Top's signature since the 1950s: vanilla ice cream on a stick dipped in chocolate flavoured with raspberry jelly crystals, the coating cracking over the vanilla.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Karaka Berries

Bright orange berries of the native karaka tree; the flesh is edible but the kernel is toxic until detoxified by prolonged boiling, steaming and soaking — prepared in hapū-specific ways and stored for winter.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Karengo

Native red seaweed related to nori (Porphyra species), harvested off southern coasts in spring and air-dried into dark purple fronds; chewed as a snack or added to soups, once a traded Māori staple.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Kawakawa

Heart-shaped leaves of a native shrub, dried for a mild peppery tea or used fresh as a wrapping and seasoning.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Kina

Native sea urchin whose roe is eaten raw from the shell, intensely briny with a bitter finish.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Kiwi Onion Dip

Kiwi dip

Reduced cream stirred with a packet of dried onion soup mix and left to thicken, served with potato crisps.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Krispie

Cornflake and golden syrup biscuit baked flat and firm, sometimes with a chocolate drizzle.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Kānga Pirau

Whole maize cobs steeped in running water for weeks until fermented, then boiled into a sour porridge with cream and sugar.

🇳🇿New Zealand

Kūmara

Sweet potato brought south by Polynesian voyagers, now grown mainly around Dargaville in three main varieties.

🇦🇺Australia

Lamington

Lammo

A lamington is a square of sponge dipped in chocolate icing and rolled in coconut, sometimes split for cream or jam.