Restaurants generally close on a Monday or Tuesday as they’re generally low volume and it means their staff get a regular day off, after working the weekend.
Fish trawlers don't go out on Sunday evenings for the Monday morning catch, hence fish markets are not open for trade on Mondays. Is why you shouldn't get your fish n chips on a monday, it's frozen.
Grass fed beef is much more commonly raised and served in NZ, and does have a different, “milder” or even a bit “gamier” flavor than grain-fed beef. Grass fed is also like 100X healthier to eat and better for the planet
Had an American boss for a decade, he came from the US for the job. Your comment about hard cookies reminded me that he used to say cookies should be soft. In NZ a soft cookie is a sign it has gone stale and been left out to absorb water. Locals thought he was nuts. Although I have noticed in the last few years cookies coming on the market which are not as completely solid / hard as the general type.
@@zestoslife Im a New Zealander, I think I ate a cookie once, cookies have only been around for somewhere around 30years here, I scoff biscuits by the dozen with a cuppa
Biscuits (cookies) are supposed to be hard, soft ones are stale. Congratulations, you got to taste what beef is supposed to taste like when they feed on grass (which is natural) instead of grains (which is not natural). People get paid on Wednesday or Thursday in NZ so they eat out between Wednesday and Sunday nights. There's no money left by Monday, so many (sit down) restaurants close Monday and Tuesday. Many small shops went out of business as a result of COVID and their owners moved on to other things like working for bigger companies, so they never reopened.
Tasty cheese is a much stronger tasting cheese than your normal cheddar, edam and similar cheeses. It is best used warm or hot, particularly in cooking. Shops generally close at 5 PM to give the staff time for their families. Some supermarkets and speciality shops stay open to about 9, because we regard family time and recreation as more important than someones preference to shop. Weekends are important, and while more shops stay open. it is only a comparitively recent change. We don't have "grain fed" beef or lamb - grass is superior.
Nice to hear your comments which seems to be fair - intrigued by the tipping aspect - hope we stay tip free - I had hassles in USA about 35 years ago and majorly offended the waitress - sad about the jet lag aspect - some bods are very strong on not eating meat, drinking alcohol from 24 hours before travel till after getting home - could be an old wives tale though - there aren’t many Māoris in the South Island in comparison to the north island
Thanks for the interesting comments, always good to get an outside look at our country 🙂I guess the jetlag thing was based on the fact that you were flying with the sun coming, but against it going home. Kia ora, and hope to see you again some time!
Auckland is my home town but i moved to the south island about 5 years ago. During COVID Auckland CBD all but died so unfortunately you caught it in a rut, i was an awesome city to grow up in and the suburb's are still cool but probably hard to do on a tourist time frame. food culture here is strong if you go to the smaller places, we just dont have need of a 200 seater, there's a few big places that seat like 100+ and we have Denny's too but when you go in to a place and there's only 2 or 3 tables full it gives a bad vibe, thats why they do the 20 - 30 lay out to use the space better, also hospitality businesses rarely open on a Monday Tuesday as they are just too quiet, its the start of the work week, people dont have time or money that side of Wednesday for much. highly recommend Asian food in NZ its pretty good we have a lot of immigrant communities here that have recent roots which ads to the authentic taste, of course we also have really good American style Chinese food too. supermarket snacks are pretty average over all, we used to have a few cool brands, or at least they seemed cool when i was a kid, but yeah those cookies need to be dunked in either tea or milo or they are utter trash, cookie time cookies are faaaaaaaaaaaar superior.
Speaking of water quality; A lot of tourist spots, public parks, road-side rest stops where there are toilets, i sites (tourist information sights) and the like, have a water fountain for refilling bottles, and it's almost always filtered. It typically is nicer than the local tap water, but a lot of larger districts have rather good quality tap water.
Workers in fast food get paid properly not the stipends that are acceptable in the USA so the cost is higher and no tips ! The beef is raised in paddocks not concrete feedlots - tastes a lot better and is way better for the cows too. NZ has great water standards enshrined in law. Did you try mountain streams ? The green is (in part) caused by the excess UV. Did you do mad adventure activities in Rotorua and Queenstown? If you do it again - go right off the track - look at a map and pick random small towns to stop at - go to the local pub and sit and chat to the locals and you will end up getting invited to alsorts of places. Also the scenic train journeys are quite cool. If you can ride - use motorbikes to avoid traffic !
We definitely wanna go back at some point and explore some other area and even spend more time doing activities in the towns. Rotorua and Queenstown in particular were amazing, and I'd love to spend more time there.
I’m a Kiwi in Arizona. I experience minimal jet lag into NZ but bad jet lag returning to Az. I put it down to poor quality, flavourless American processed foods, which lack the minerals and nutrients Kiwi foods provide naturally from the mineral rich, young volcanic soils.
If I could advise anyone on a tour of NZ, I recommend driving up or down the Haast pass in the rain to transit the West Coast to the Southern coast, or vice versa. And drive both coasts in full. Perhaps also make time to hike overnight into Welcome Flat Hut just south of Fox Glacier. And the Coromandel Coast...
I have 12 days in NZ next month, looking over my plan and comparing to all the places I want to see, it's still nowhere near enough time!! I see a lot of people taking close to a month to properly see both islands.
If you have any question, feel free to ask. I really enjoyed my time there and would have loved to see more and/or spent more time exploring some areas. We got lucky and had nice weather for everything, so plans went smoothly.
Thank you for good comments😍 Jet lag... Yes, our body time is 25 hours a day and we are more accustomed to have a longer day than a shorter day. Going towards the west direction makes a day longer and easy, and going towards the east direction makes a day shorter and very very dauntingly hard. In the US, living in California and traveling to New York is much more tiring than the way around. I studied in New York in my 20s. Every time I spent a week or so in holidays with my brother who lived in Fresco, I had a bad headache on the way back. At the time I just thought all the noises of New York made this, but NO, because I have 27 hours when I go to the Westcoast and only 21 hours when come back to the Eastcoast😅😅 You may think this effect may not apply when the time lag is about 12 hours because half a day would neutralize the longer or shorter... well, strangely, that is not the case. You still get really tired going towards the west. I do not know why but it is true out of my own experience.
FYI the Tasman glacier is very nice and right next to mt cook, you can get a flight onto it just like the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers, I thought it was better.
ive lived and worked in Germany, UK, France, Cyprus and New Zealand. Food cost is about the same in all these countries and none of these countries tip. Americans have much cheaper food, but probs make up difference in price by tipping.
Tasty is the brand of the cheese and as a Kiwi living in the US for nearly 20 years I do miss Tasty cheese Nothing in the US compares to it Another I miss is Vintage cheese Much nicer than any American brands I have tried
taupo= the au sounds like o and the o sounds like awe, in pakeha vernacular it sounds like towl without the l sound, and poe( like the ghost) or the american po po, sorry if my american is not up to scratch, it's kind of hard to explain the flick of the tongue required to pronounce r sounds, however most people call tauranga, toe wrong ah, a sort of colloquial kiwinglish
If you ever do get back to NZ I see you got to Milford Sound, I'm a little surprised you weren't as impressed as I would expect however save up get a helicopter ride around the area trust me you will not believe the place. I agree its a hell of a long day on a bus. You might be right about the beef although I think most of NZ is grass feed, I suspect it was the type of beef, Angus beef tastes different to other types.
We wanted to do the flight, but was a bit pricey. Dont get me wrong on Milford though - it was really cool. I feel like I've seen some really cool stuff between annual visits to upstate NY, some Alaska trips, and various other things. So it really wasn't as "new" to me as it likely was to most people. It's still really cool, and I'd totally suggest it to others.
@@tac-com2574 yes if you have been to Alaska, which I haven't, then I would totally agree. Yes I would have to think twice about the helicopter if I was paying too, its very expensive largely because there are rich tourists in Queenstown and they hype the price I think. Im an NZer and Im impressed with your accurate descriptions of reality. The Grant Canyon and NY is on my bucket list :)
@campbellmorrison8540 the Grand Canyon is the main place I ever visited that REALLY gave me that feeling of awe and realizing how small we are. It's hard to describe the feeling. Being at the top of Isthmus gave a similar feeling but not nearly as strong (but it was a nicer view). I would 100% recommended visisitng it. It's not really the best representation of what the US is like, but it's just a cool experience. As for NY, I hate cities. But upstate (Finger Lakes) are just a beautiful area and very relaxing.
Ha. Artificially green? (13:40) Nope, that's real green. We didn't hire the hobbits to go paint the landscape for us, it's that green in the North Island. That's as real as it gets.
You need to know it’s not THE North island and THE South island. The main islands are named NORTH and SOUTH ISLANDS, no need for the ‘THE’. No-one calls Tasmania ‘the’ Tasmania.
@@prnothall9302 While you may be correct that North Island is simply another name much like Christchurch, Auckland and Napier, I've never heard anyone say "I moved to North Island", it's always been "I moved to the North Island". I've been around a while, so I should have heard that if it was used a lot.
"tasty" cheese means it's been aged longer, so it has more of a bite to it. "smoked" cheese is literally just that--it's been smoked in a smoke house pretty much the same way that cold cut meats get smoked.
We have "aged" and "sharp" as some descriptions, but usually accompanied by the type of cheese. Like Sharp Cheddar or Aged Cheddar. It seems a bit odd that the label would have the descriptor, but not the type of cheese. Same for "Smoked". We have Smoked Cheddar or Smoked Gouda or Smoked Provalone. Just saying Smoked doesn't really say what type of cheese it is - just the style. It seems like it's commonly known over there what what the type of cheese is, so the descriptor/style is all that's needed. But as a foreigner seeing these names, it's quite confusing.
@@tac-com2574 woah calm down there pilgrim. As a side note: almost all the cheeses that you get in NZ and Europe you can't buy in America because they don't allow active cultures and the cheese must be made from ultra homogenised and pasteurised milk. The theory was that it would cut down on food poisoning--the result was that American cheese contains a whole lot more sugar, salt and artificial flavouring.
Kiwis generally do not package or label their food products so that visiting Americans can understand it. And yes, things are different in NZ than in USA (the difference is the thing).
Even "great cities" have bad areas, and I was afraid that I just wound up only experiencing the bad areas. That said, the Skyline/view from the hike we did there was pretty cool.
Auckland is like any major city in the world, with basically everything within 15-20mins drive away, if not 5mins. Every suburb is the size of any other city in NZ, think about it, population of Auckland is greater than the whole of the Sth Island.
It is not strange for a small business to have a day off. I personally would not open my art gallery on a Sunday because it is the Sabbath (and I went to Mass). So it took you weeks to learn our population is 5 million . How could one restaurant attract 200 people! Grain fed beef is ghastly -as is the the fat mottled all through the muscle. (In New York I could barely find any edible food and certainly no vegetables or fruit). If you had read the label you could have learned that "tasty" is "Matured for 18 months"-compared to "mild" which is a mild taste as not matured, (And wins all the top places in cheese competitions in Europe) Apart from smoked cheese there are about 40 or 50 varieties of other cheeses from Parmesan to Brie.
Local business often take a day off. I didn't find that odd. What I did find odd is that they all seemed to pick the same day (Monday if I remember correctly). Market flow would typically lead to business staggering the day they're closed. Also, one of the places I was mentioning was Auckland, which seems more populated than most areas around where I live.
Taupo and Tekapo were the 2 main ones that caught me off guard with the pronunciation. Or at least those were the main one si was aware of - I could be butchering other ones as well without knowing.
@@georgeferns6482 : us Aucklanders say Tow poe, Tow as in Tower and Poe as in toe, pronounciations have changed in last 60yrs. Went to school with kids that lived on Ihumatou pa and the way that’s pronounced now bears no resemblance to how they pronounced it.
