Amuninni (aa-moo-nin-nee) is the Sicilian way of saying ‘let’s go’, much like the often used Italian word ‘andiamo’. It’s midafternoon on another cloudless day in Sicily and I’m taking a moment. It is day seven on our first Taste of Sicily tour and after another busy...
Opinion
Every week The Feed interviews the movers, the shakers and the makers in the New Zealand food industry. Check out the interviews on The Feed Weekly podcast or in a Q&A format below. And if you’ve got a story to tell or an opinion to share, drop us a line at editor@thefeed.co.nz
The anxiety of authenticity vs appropriation
Authentic. It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2023 but for chefs, foodwriters, marketers and foodlovers it’s a loaded term. Ever since Christopher Columbus journeyed from Spain to America beginning culinary and cultural trade between Europe and The Americas...
Eat Up New Zealand – The Bach Edition
Peter Gordon describes Al Brown’s book Eat Up New Zealand – The Bach Edition as “a gem of a cookbook, full of childhood memories and insights into our culinary future”. I have to agree with Peter that it is a cookbook full of nostalgic recipes. It is, in fact, these...
Opito Bay Salt: from the Coromandel to the world
Salt has been a vital part of human civilization throughout history, valued as a means of preserving food and enhancing flavour. Like wine it has long been associated with a sense of place. Solnitsata, the oldest known town in Europe, was built around a salt producing...
Growing NZ cities eat up fertile land – but housing and food production can co-exist
Donald Royds, CC BY-SA Shannon Davis, Lincoln University, New Zealand Auckland Council recently voted to decrease the amount of city fringe land available for development, citing flood risks and infrastructure costs. Meanwhile in Christchurch, plans for an 850-home...
Wahlburgers is set to open in Queenstown. What celebrity restaurant might be next for Aotearoa?
News drops this week that the 112th branch of Wahlburgers will soon be opening in Queenstown. For those of you not fully up to date with the latest in celebrity owned calorie peddlers, Wahlburgers is the fast food chain owned by A-list celeb Mark Wahlberg, his...
What the papers had to say about the Supie collapse
News emerged this week of the failure of online supermarket Supie. The virtual retailer went into adminstration after a major investor refused to finance the company any further in light of slower than expected growth. The business is carrying about $3 million in...
Know your Texas brisket from your Memphis ribs: a short guide to American barbeque
Meatstock, surely New Zealand's most self-consciously butch food and music festival, is set to return in February to its old Hamilton stomping grounds after a three year hiatus. Great news for all you BBQ bogans. With The Feed's editor-at-large preparing to cross the...
Future diets will be short of micronutrients like iron — it’s time to consider how we feed people
Iron deficiency is one of the most common forms of nutrient deficiency around the world. Severe iron deficiency, also known as anaemia, affects nearly 50% of women of reproductive age in regions like South Asia, Central Africa and West Africa (in contrast to 16% of...
My bag of political carrots
I bought a 3kg bag of carrots at Costco at $4.99. That's a lot of carrots considering I live alone. But the deal seemed good - but would it turn into 24 carrot gold? I knew I could save precious pennies over the next two to three weeks - just eat more carrots. After...
Spicy food might burn in the moment, but it likely won’t harm your health in the long term
Many cultures integrate hot peppers into traditional dishes. AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File Paul D. Terry, University of Tennessee Everyone has a different tolerance for spicy food — some love the burn, while others can’t take the heat. But the scientific...
What the papers had to say about the Weet-Bix saga
As the wheat dust settles at the bottom of the box in Aotearoa’s latest breakfast-based battle for the soul of the nation, we here at The Feed have cast our eyes over the media landscape and asked ourselves and our friends on news desks across the country: “what was...
Fish tales: Kai Ika bringing fish heads to those that need (and want) them most
With Aotearoa's fish stocks under pressure from over-fishing, the way we consume fish becomes a vitally important issue. Many New Zealanders, particularly Pākehā, eat only the fillets of the fish and tend to discard those delicious and nutritious parts that the late...
Final call: Clipper’s final destination
New Zealand’s most internationally successful bar is coming in for a final landing, four years after opening its doors on Ponsonby Road, Auckland. A brief but sparkling jewel in the crown of Auckland hospitality – loved by its regulars, 22 of them at a time and...
Why we love the Negroni: iconic drink sells itself (and Campari)
Why should you love the Negroni? Well, picture this: It's the cocktail world's equivalent of a witty, mustachioed Italian philosopher with a monocle and a penchant for spontaneous haiku. It's that one eccentric aunt you describe as an acquired taste, but you can't...
Roll up, roll up: it’s election time
Big news this week as Edmonds, the backbone of Kiwiana baking, took a slump at the supermarket, announcing they were deleting their frozen pastry range, just as Labour slumped in the polls. Quite the coincidence as Chris Hipkins happily devours flaky sausage rolls by...
Sourdough: the real bread and butter politics
On a Wednesday night, as everyone else is shutting up shop and heading home, a small group of us pile into central Auckland bakery Bread & Butter. The operation effectively runs 24 hours a day with staff shifts covering both commercial baking contracts and the...
Lucky Taco – The Book
The New Zealand culinary scene is pretty lucky. We have a delicious array of authentic cuisines available for us to discover and enjoy. Sadly, Mexican food is still not one of them. Sure, you’ll find some outliers, Tacos Tocayo in Tauranga being one of them, but...
American Eats: the Long Island bacon, egg and cheese
American food gets a bad rap from outsiders and a lot of that negativity is justified. Even the whole grain bread you buy in the supermarket tastes like unimaginative cake. Cheese is mostly ultra-processed and has the consistency of fruit leather. It's best not to...
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria in shellfish can cause serious illness
Traditional harvesting sites, or mahinga kai, continue to be used throughout New Zealand to provide food and to share skills and cultural practices between families and generations. But our new research shows that wild foods concentrate antibiotic-resistant bacteria...
Southland’s Food Flag is Flying High
Southland's food flag is flying high and so is Lauraine Jacobs. We welcomed Aotearoa's queen of food writing (and thinking!) to share her Southland explorations of the New Zealand food story. I have always said the best position to view things clearly is at 35,000...