Mod Oz Cuisine

The food in Australia is known as "Mod Oz." The style uses traditional steak and seafood plus local ingredients to create interesting combinations. Above you see roasted local pork medallions with crispy skin, a bacon slice, garlic, and a potato cake. In the background is my meal, which consisted of linguini tossed with peas, mushrooms, parmesan cheese, and walnuts in a pesto sauce. For a side we choose the jullienne zuccini with lemon dill sauce. Although Mod Oz would qualify as "small food," the taste is worth suffering the 5 star plating and prices.

There are lots of really great local foods to try here. One is a bay bug, which sounds and looks gross. It is a type of crustacean that looks like a horseshoe crab shell (just the round front shell) in the rear attached to a crab's head in the front, with no claws. Apparently, it tastes similar to lobster. Then there's local wild and farmed game meat, such as kangaroo, emu, crocodile, and boar. Local crayfish are called yabbies and are served like shrimp. There are also weird local fruits and veggies which tend to have tribal names which I unfortunately can't spell, but are very tasty. For these reasons, Sydney is considered by many foodie review magazines and travel guides as a new gourmet hot spot.

In New Zealand, the food was similar. Here are some of the things we tried.

These were some Green Lipped mussels we tried the night we stayed in Coromandel town. I normally don`t eat mussels, but these were quite good.

You can`t enjoy mussels without a good beer right? This was one of the local brews called Monteith`s. Very good, similar to Sam Adams in the States.

Camp breakfast of oatmeal, bananas, orange, peanut butter, and instant coffee.
Emily, in response to your question, why yes, this is an Orikaso bowl.

Camp dinner of canned stew, potatoes, carrots and zucchini steamed in foil, and bread with peanut butter. Can´t beat camp food!

Our last day was a little stressful, and we couldn't leave without having a good cup of joe.

We were pleased with the food in New Zealand. Even the stuff we didn't cook ourselves. It was good, quality, down home kind of food that we like. New Zealanders actually reminded us a lot of the people we met in Scotland. Honest, and very proud of their work.

-Anna & Scott