The cuisine of New Zealand has historical influences from British cuisine and Māori culture. As an island nation with a primarily agricultural economy, New Zealand yields produce from land and sea.
Similar to the cuisine of Australia, the cuisine of New Zealand is a diverse British-based cuisine, with Mediterranean and Pacific Rim influences as the country has become more cosmopolitan. Since the 1970s, new culinary influences such as New American, Southeast Asian, East Asian, and South Asian food have become popular.
Māori cuisine
thumb|A [[hāngī dinner as served to tourists]]
When the Māori arrived in New Zealand from tropical Polynesia, they brought a number of food plants, including , taro, (ube, purple yam), and , most of which grew well only in the north of the North Island. Kūmara could be grown as far south as the northern South Island, and became a staple food as it could be stored over the winter. Native New Zealand plants such as fernroot became a more important part of the diet, along with insects such as the huhu grub. Earthworms, called , are a part of the traditional Māori diet as well. Problems with horticulture were made up for by an abundance of bird and marine life. The large, flightless moa was soon hunted to extinction for food and tools as well. Rāhui, or resource restrictions, included forbidding the hunting of certain species in particular places or at certain times of year to allow populations to be maintained. Seafood consumed included or freshwater crayfish, or abalone, and or bluff oysters. The discovery of Typha orientalis led to the creation of a gritty unleavened bread made laboriously from its dried pollen called pungapunga.
thumb|left|Preparation of a modern hāngī for tourists at Mitai Māori Village, Rotorua
Similar to other Polynesian people, Māori cooked food in earth ovens, known in New Zealand as hāngī, although the word is also used. Stones are heated by fire and food packed in leaves placed on top. These packs are then covered with foliage, cloth, or wet sacks, and then a layer of earth. Other cooking methods included roasting, stone-boiling, or steaming using geothermal heated water, and cooking over an open fire.
Food and religion
In traditional Māori religion food was noa, or non-sacred. This meant care had to be taken to prevent it from coming into contact with tapu places or objects. If it did, the tapu of the place or object, and often the people associated with it, would be at risk. High chiefs, and people engaged in tapu work such as tattooing, were tapu and were restricted in how they could deal with food, with the most tapu needing to be fed by others. One story tells of a war party which had to be postponed as no non-tapu people were available to load the food supplies into the party's waka.
European influences
thumb|Sheep grazing in Canterbury. Early British settlers introduced Western stock and crops. [[New Zealand agriculture now produces an abundance of fresh produce.]]
When Europeans (Pākehā) first arrived in New Zealand from the late eighteenth century, they brought their own foods with them. Some of these, especially pork and potatoes, were quickly adopted by Māori. Potatoes were particularly popular as they were grown in a similar way to kūmara but produced a much higher yield with less effort. Other European foods such as wheat, pumpkin, mutton, sugar, and many types of fruit also became a part of the Māori diet and were widely traded with visiting ships. American sailors brought new varieties of kūmara to New Zealand, and these high-yield varieties quickly superseded the original varieties of kūmara. (Today, most kūmara are the commercial varieties: Owairaka Red, Toka Toka Gold and Beauregard.) A coffee and spice merchant of European descent, David Strang, invented instant coffee in Invercargill in 1890. The drink quickly spread around New Zealand and then around the world.
Alcohol, initially rejected as (stinking water), also became acceptable in Māori life. Most Māori tribes grew surpluses of food for trade with other tribes and with European visitors and settlers. Some tribes grew wealthy from this trade, although the Māori food industry declined in the mid-nineteenth century because of land loss and competition from settler farmers. Many traditional food sources, such as the kererū (wood pigeon) and other birds, as well as some types of fish and plants, became scarce as forests were destroyed and species were over-hunted.
Māori cuisine today
thumb|A Māori boil-up
Present-day Māori cuisine is a mixture of Māori tradition, old-fashioned English cookery, and contemporary dishes. Some Māori names for consumables, like pāua (also prized for its shell), have entered common New Zealand English usage.
Most large Māori gatherings feature a hāngī, which is likely to contain foods brought to New Zealand by Māori and by pākehā. In recent decades, there has been much concern that Māori are disproportionately likely to suffer from obesity, heart disease, and diabetes as a result of eating habits.
Two dishes regarded as distinctively Māori are the boil-up—made of pork, potatoes, kūmara, and dumplings—and pork and pūhā (sow thistle), which combine introduced and indigenous foods. Both dishes owe much to nineteenth-century British cooking methods.
Another distinctive food is rēwena or "Māori bread", which is made with fermented potatoes. The 2020 cookbook Hiakai by chef Monique Fiso, academic Tracy Berno and food writer Lucy Corry describes the history, development and tikanga of modern Māori food.
A dish served during Matariki feasts or at hākari (feasts) on the marae is parāoa parai (fry bread). They are described as crispy and golden brown on the outside and fluffy on the inside.
New Zealand European cuisine
The majority of New Zealanders are Pākehā of British descent, so British cuisine has been very influential.
British Isles settler food
Nineteenth-century British settlers in New Zealand tried as much as possible to reproduce the foods of their homeland. In the early stages of colonisation this was difficult as many ingredients were unavailable. They ate native birds and fish, and used local ingredients in substitution for those which were unavailable, for example brewing tea and beer using unconventional plants. Most of these innovations were abandoned as the New Zealand British population increased and conventional ingredients began to be mass-imported or produced in New Zealand. One innovation which was commonly served on New Zealand tables until the mid-1980s was colonial goose, a stuffed leg of lamb which substituted for goose. A major difference between British and New Zealand British food was that meat was much more readily available to all social classes in New Zealand. Whereas in nineteenth-century Britain, labourers ate meat in very small quantities, in New Zealand they could have it for every meal. Since meat was a high-status food in Britain, British settlers in New Zealand ate vast quantities of it. Dishes such as fish and chips and meat pies remain popular in both the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
Like the British, New Zealand British have traditionally preferred sweet foods, and a wealth of baking dishes celebrate important occasions, reflected through cakes, scones, muffins and other mainly sweet baking dishes. The country's most iconic recipe book, the Edmonds Cookery Book, originally began as publicity material for the baking powder company Edmonds, and contains a high proportion of baking recipes.
From Antipodean British fare to Asia-Pacific fusion
For most of the twentieth century, New Zealand cuisine remained highly derivative of British food. From about the 1960s, the advent of affordable air travel allowed New Zealanders to travel overseas more easily. Many New Zealanders went to Europe on overseas experience where they encountered French and Italian cooking, and also the Indian and Chinese restaurants of Britain as well as the New British cuisine. When they returned home they helped create a demand for better-quality food and more variety. Pizza Hut in 1974, and McDonald's in 1976.
The 1980s was marked with economic liberalisation dubbed Rogernomics (named for the then-Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas) that abolished farm subsidies, forcing many farmers to find alternative means of survival. Many chose to produce specialty cheese types like Havarti, Brie and Stilton, or diversified into growing olives or grapes instead of traditional meat and dairy farming. Avocado oil for cooking was commercialised in New Zealand in 1999 by a group of growers based in the Tauranga region.
Rogernomics also abolished most import tariffs and instituted a more relaxed agricultural product import quarantine regime. This allowed hitherto prohibited or prohibitively expensive specialty foods, such as genuine serrano ham from Spain, extra virgin olive oil from Italy, and mango from Thailand, to be available in New Zealand at reasonable costs. These two developments from Rogernomics have given birth to a proliferation of specialist food products available in New Zealand.
On top of changes in available ingredients, the 1980s also witnessed a wholescale liberalisation in attitude towards the formerly 'foreign muck' cooking styles and segmentation of lifestyles according to income and socio-economic status. New Zealand had by this time developed a largely distinct cultural outlook away from the British Isles, and this also made foreign cooking styles more acceptable among the general public. The same era also saw the moneyed populations feeling free to openly emulate the luxurious eating and drinking habits of upper and upper middle classes overseas, as the traditional New Zealand preference of egalitarianism, manifested in widespread prejudice against any deviation from lower-middle-class lifestyles, waned in influence. In the words of New Zealand-based anthropologist David Veart, this period of sea change in New Zealand's culinary culture was akin to "being let out after a long school detention".
Other cuisines in New Zealand
People from many different backgrounds have settled in New Zealand, and many have tried to reproduce their native cuisines or national dishes in New Zealand. Similar to early Pākehā settlers, this often proved difficult. Larger ethnic groups, such as the Chinese, were able to import some ingredients, but often dishes had to be modified to use local ingredients. Ethnic restaurants have served as community meeting places and have also given other New Zealanders a chance to try different cuisines. However, for most of its history there were few ethnic restaurants in New Zealand other than inauthentic Chinese, Indian and Italian eateries.
The Immigration Act 1986 completely abolished nationality preference for immigration, and immigration from East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia has greatly increased since. Many of these immigrants have brought their cuisines to New Zealand, and often opened ethnic restaurants and takeaway eateries, giving New Zealanders a chance to try more authentic editions of Japanese, Thai, Malay, regional Chinese, Indian, and other Asian cuisines. Over time these ethnic cuisines have been gradually accepted by Pākehā and Māori New Zealanders. Many New Zealanders still regard these as 'ethnic' ingredients, although as in Australia the foreign connotation is decreasing with the passage of time.
Contemporary cuisine
thumb|right|This [[hamburger at a Botany fast food chain contains slices of canned beetroot.]]
thumb|Kingfish crudo, lotus chips, ponzu served at the restaurant Field & Green in Wellington
As a result of various developments, the cuisine of New Zealand in the 21st century is in a state of flux: cosmopolitan Pacific Rim fare's reign is now the norm in much of metropolitan eating-out scenes, and traditional hearty settlers' food, now dubbed 'Kwisine Kiwiana', but reinterpreted through Pacific Rim cooking knowledge, is a popular cooking style for eating-out scenes even in the most remote rural regions. Most of the home cooking prepared at households in Auckland is now a mix of traditional Kiwiana dishes heavily modified by Mediterranean and Asian techniques and ingredients, and adapted versions of Mediterranean, Chinese, and Indian dishes. In the more culturally traditional parts of the country, such as rural Canterbury and the West Coast, however, traditional Kiwiana fare is still the norm at many homes.
Certain vestiges of traditional Kiwiana dishes remain popular throughout the country, such as fish and chips, meat pies, custard squares, pavlova, and others.