The Wellington Food Show - part 1!

So, today's highlight (let's face it, the only thing I did other than chores and a run this morning) was the Wellington Food Show. A delightful and engorging five hours was spent at the Westpac stadium, scoping out the bargains, sampling many different foodstuffs, and coming home fully laden. I took quite a few photos (and am running out of day!) so this will come in two installments; today, the stalls and tasty treats we tried at the show; tomorrow, the demonstrations and the tasty treats we brought home. ;-)

One of our first stops was the Rush Munro stall, where we got to taste some delicious passionfruit ice-cream. I'll take that at 11.30am - a pre-lunch aperitif, if you will! I would have been tempted to buy but it would have melted. Oh well, there's plenty more where that came from!

We were also plied with a taster from the Kaweka stall - I had a chilli con carne, and it was nice. I was tempted to buy but the throngs were to forceful to battle, and I lost interest after being swept away - sorry Kaweka!

This lovely, helpful man was buzzing about the Loaf stall, proffering samples of whichever flavour of loaf (or slice) anyone wanted to try. We must have tried most of them before we decided which we wanted to take home - notably, their gluten-free carrot cake was very moist and spicy.

We tasted some of the kelp salt blends at Pacific Harvest - but nothing struck our fancy; I was hanging out for more exciting things. ;-)

Like the awesome thick yoghurt and flavoured haloumi at The Collective Dairy. Again, the friendly stallholders let us try several different flavours of yoghurt before we settled on our favourites.

We snapped up a bottle of wine after a couple of samples at Brown Brothers - we have previously had their Rosa Moscato, which not only shares my first name but is also cloyingly sweet - perhaps not to everyone's taste but fits me perfectly! ;-) But we chose something different today... I'll tell you tomorrow!

Barrys Bay Cheese is a Canterbury-based cheese factory, and I've even been to the factory, so I'm familiar with their tasty cheeses - mostly hard cheeses, some with herbs throughout and other such fun things. Unfortunately they were a bit too popular today, so I didn't get too close. Definitely worth checking out if you're heading to Akaroa, though (they're en route) - and the cheese is in most NZ supermarkets now.

The Fudge Cottage is another Canterbury special - I was impressed (and pleased!) they made it to the Wellington show. Yum! They're always good for samples - if you pass through their store in the Arts Centre in Christchurch you will get to try a flavour or two while you make up your mind - and they do tours of their kitchen. Dangerously I now know I can buy their treats online - uh-oh!

Mr Cake was famished by this stage (who are we kidding, he's always hungry!), and the samples weren't hitting the spot, so when we spotted Las Margaritas (no website but you can email this address), where they were selling flautas (a fried tortilla filled with chicken or beef) we had to get one.

This charming man was chief cook, and also exchanging banter with his queue of customers. "Shall I put sauce on this? It's hot, like me." He also suggested taking photos incurred a fee, but kindly waived it just for me. ;-)

I didn't manage to snap a photo of the flauta before Mr Cake started wolfing it down, but did get a couple of bites myself, and it was very tasty - mild but still flavoursome, and the tortilla was lovely and crispy.

There were loads of lucious looking olives, pepperdews and sundried tomatoes at Kato(website currently out of action).

I tried an amazing sugar encrusted almond at Nutzz - so very tempting, but quite expensive, sadly.

I bought Mr Cake a little something tasty from J Friend and Co - their whole range was very tempting, making it very hard to choose!

My personal favourite has to be the Lindt stall - I love all the new and interesting things I tried at various other places, but Lindt have amazing show specials - $10 for four 100g blocks, for example - so they may have taken a large chunk of my spending money today. ;-)

Oh - and I also got to try this stuff - so good! I would have bought some but the thought of carrying four extra bottles on the half hour walk home put me off - but I've been told it's stocked at New World, so next time I am seeking a summery/light drink I'll be hunting it down!



The Wellington Food Show is from 14-16 May, at Westpac Stadium, admission $20.