we're in Aotearoa New Zealand and we are doing the biggest
food trip ever we're going top to bottom for two months in a camper van
to find all the best food in Aotearoa we are starting this video
in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and we'll be finishing
in the Waikato this is going to be a video
jam-packed full of really good food we are traveling the length of
Aotearoa New Zealand to hunt down New Zealand's best food
this New Zealand food series will delve into the heart of our country's food
culture we'll share the foods Kiwis love to eat
take you into the kitchens of our nation's favorite local eateries
and go behind the scenes of New Zealand's incredible food
from pāua and crayfish to oysters and dairy
showing you a side of these industries you've never seen before
this video kicks off on the outskirts of Tāmaki Makaurau
Auckland we slurp briny oysters at an oyster farm
before heading south to a town called Pokeno in the Waikato region
famous for its bacon and giant ice creams
you don't want to miss this series hit subscribe and get ready for some
mouth-watering food I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're
Chasing a Plate we hope you're hungry let's eat
because this is a two-month campervan trip through New Zealand we're not
really focusing on the big cities we think the campervan is much more fitting
with the smaller towns the countryside the small
producers and the best New Zealand has to offer
outside of the big cities so we've come from the north that's
where all the first episodes in this huge season of episodes has been from
but we've now cut through Auckland New Zealand's biggest city so about 1.5
million people live in Auckland right now we're right on the outskirts
of Auckland in the countryside and we've made a stop here for a little
snack of oysters this is an oyster farm the ocean's just over there where the
oysters grow and we can buy some from the shop right
here so let's get some oysters
I think we got here at the right time
because these guys are nearly sold out in all of the oysters so we managed to
nab a dozen of the large ones this is a really neat business so still
family owned and operated and it all happens right here so the
grading and the shucking just happens through there and the oysters are
literally in the ocean out the front or out the back of the
shop here so let's grab our our dozen oysters and get into them
this is my idea of a great snack when you're very close to the biggest city in
the country you can come out to the countryside
right beside the ocean which you can't see because it's just behind the
building but it is just behind the building so the the
oyster boats come in right there and all the beds are right
there so these are an organic oyster but they're wildly farmed so they're out
there in the ocean so no additives so they're
totally organic and these are big these are some
beautiful big oysters so these are Clevedon Coast
oysters so a rock oyster so very simply done too look lemon just go
lemon all over the oysters nothing else oh
I've got a pip in there let's just dig it out actually I need
the fork just to dig it out break it out there straight down
oh my god
oh oh because these are these aren't the
jumbos but they're not the pearls which are the tiny ones they're the large so
they're sort of the the medium-sized one so they're both
sweet and creamy all at the same time great body and
texture to it so a lot of chew you can actually really eat it and
that's with an oyster you've got to eat it there's the old thing where people
say oh just straight down the hatch never do that because you're not getting
the flavor you need to chew it and experience the joy and
that is so good obviously so fresh because we're so close to the beds
beautiful taste of the sea so a beautiful saltiness that lovely little
tang of lemon just balances out that saltiness perfectly
that is a snack and a half right here on the side of the road on our way
heading south awesome snack
we've just left the oyster place and we've popped into a little regional park
which sits right above where the oyster place
is so just behind me here is where we were eating but this is the water
where they came from so from this beautiful
green water here those beautiful creamy sweet oysters straight out of
there that was a great snack back in the van on the road
we've just made it into the Waikato region so we've crossed from the
Auckland region into the Waikato region and this is pretty much the first town
once you cross into the region coming south from Auckland and this is
called Pokeno now there's two very famous things here and this is it's
quite a neat little town because this road right here used to be State
Highway One so this used to be the main trunk line
north and south of New Zealand so it used to be incredibly busy heaps of trucks
and you always used to have to pass through this town and the real famous
thing in this town was to have an ice cream but not just
any ice cream a ginormous ice cream and as someone who was born and
raised in Auckland it was always the legendary Pokeno
ice cream and I've never actually stopped here and had one but you always
your friends talked about it and you always were desperate too so today's the
day we get a Pokeno ice cream but it's also bacon from Pokeno's very
very um well-known and so we're going to pop
into this shop here called Pokeno bacon and we're going to use that
product so we're going to buy a whole lot of meat products from this
specialty bacon shop
this shop has so much history it's been around since the 1970s and it's still a
family-run business and it's just all things
pork they also do some beef and lamb as well but mainly it's pork there's
sausages there's bacon there's um pork hocks all sorts
and we were just talking to the gang and they said that most of the pork comes
from the Waikato region so we thought it just came from Pokeno but it's from
the wider Waikato region and some of it comes from other parts of New Zealand
but that's what's exciting about New Zealand food culture
provenance is really important and people take great pride in
knowing where the food comes from and being able to tell you where it comes
from I'm just standing in front of the bacon
fridge and we've just got to choose the cut of bacon for the meal
that we're going to cook up so they've got everything streaky they've got
nitrate-free bacon they've got middle bacon bacon pieces
all sorts so it's time to make a decision
all right bacon and sausage purchasing done and now it's
ice cream time now this ice cream shop serves
Tip Top ice cream and Tip Top ice cream is the sort of the standard ice
cream in New Zealand it's the most produced it's a
huge company that makes very good ice cream because New Zealand is very well
known for its dairy products and so the ice cream is of a very high
standard but this is not a specialty ice cream or anything like that it's Tip
Top it's the standard ice cream it's the ice cream that we all grew up with
we had this all as kids so we know these flavors all very well but this place is
so iconic to get an ice cream so let's go
grab one
so we got all the ice creams lined up and this place is famous
because of the size of the ice creams so you can see up here all the different
sizes you can get so it starts at $2 for two scoops
goes up to $15 for 15 scoops so that is a ridiculously
big ice cream there's no way we could ever manage that but we're gonna get
all the super iconic flavors and get something in the sort of the five six
seven scoop range
i know the classic kiwi flavors thank you
okay holy moly how big is this ice cream now if you've
watched our videos before you know that i'm a mega ice cream fan so this is
pretty much my dream come true we've got six flavors let me talk you
through what we've got so this on the top here is goody goody gumdrops it's
bubblegum flavoured ice cream with lollies in there so chewy um jelly
candy this one here is orange chocolate chip
so orange flavored ice cream chocolate chips
mint chocolate chip hokey pokey so vanilla ice cream with
um honeycomb like little honeycomb balls all throughout it boysenberry down here
and then this is gold rush so these three are iconic so classic
kiwi ice cream flavors the ones that you love
and that you grow up with so i'm diving in for the goody goody gum drops
so good bubblegum flavoured ice cream and
lollies it's such a fun flavor and this is my
personal favorite this is orange chocolate chip
it just takes you back to your childhood so as Thomas mentioned before
these are tip top flavors tip top's like the biggest producer
of ice cream in the country and these are the flavors that we grow up with so
it's really nostalgic eating them
this is heaven it's perfect too because it's winter time in New Zealand
these aren't going to melt for a while and we're in the Waikato which is the
heart of the dairy country in New Zealand and
so Pokeno for these giant ice creams
that is the most unreal ice cream i've ever seen now Sheena is the biggest
consumer of ice cream i've ever met so i'll be lucky if i get my
hands on it but i'm definitely about to tackle her so i can get into that ice
cream as well that's a super cool place to stop very
iconic and a thing you've got to do when you're
heading south out of Auckland and i'm so glad i can finally tick that off my
bucket list it's been on the bucket list since i was about three years old
that is an awesome ice cream
after having the epic ice cream that giant ice cream
and buying the bacon and the sausages we headed a bit further
south further into the Waikato and we've actually decided to camp so we slept
here because we looked at the forecast we saw it was going to be a beautiful
still clear morning with a massive frost so
super cold overnight so we thought with the
bacon and the sausies let's do a full
english breakfast so a solid get the day started
breakfast so we camped up here and this was a very cool camp actually we're in
Te Kauwhata a small town and what they do is they let you camp
here at the rugby club so you can park up at the rugby club
it's free well they ask for a $5 donation just to cover costs and
for the community but what they offer is power so you can
connect your van to power which is really cool so we had the
heater on this morning when we woke up so
really unusual to have a free campsite that also offers
power but it's freezing cold super ready for this breakfast so let's get cooking
we've spread out all the stuff we're gonna put into our full english
breakfast and look at that bacon i mean the unbelievable color in that bacon
beautiful amount of fat that is gonna make the van smell unreal
we've got the sausages that we bought yesterday so
these are pork and bacon sausages so they should have a
nice little bacon tang to them they're going to be awesome
we've got some white bread thick slices of white bread we're going to cook up
some tomatoes we've got eggs and some classic
baked beans gotta have baked beans with your big english breakfast so let's get
this all in the pan get this breakfast on the go
i've been thinking about these sausages all night long
one because i'm super excited to eat them and two because
i didn't want to burn them in the pan i find cooking sausages in the pan super
hard because sometimes they're raw inside and they're burnt on the outside
so i've just gently poached them in water i'm going to tip that water out
and then everything is ready to go we're going to cook everything up in the fry
pan basically except for the beans oh so going to chuck the bacon the eggs
the sausages all into that pan get it all sizzling up
the sausages are browning up super nice so it's time for that bacon to go
in we agreed that we needed at least two slices each
okay in it goes ah hear that sizzle oh yeah
i'm just plating up this big breakfast and this is gonna set us up for the day
i reckon there is a heap of food on these plates and it's looking so good
how is this for a breakfast of champions huge pile of beans that
amazing bacon which has crisped up and browned up beautifully in the pan
sausages perfectly golden on the outside really
good um poaching them first just for about five six minutes in that water and
then they've just browned up beautifully without going
black and drying up i got the double yolker so we've got the double yoga egg
double sausages double bacon door stopper slab of white bread
full english and this is a very common breakfast here in New Zealand obviously
with the heritage of New Zealand we were a colony of a British colony so
this type of food's very common here with
full on loaded up breakfast i'm just gonna go straight
for this bacon that we got yesterday i've got sausage and beans
oh my god
oh yeah
that sausage
is so juicy it's got a great flavor the only
sort of um artisan produced sausages can have that really
meaty porky bacony flavour
i've just had the sausage as well so i've had both now the sausage like
Sheena said is meaty it's packed with pork it's not
been bulked out with fillers and the bacon is unreal it's got
a beautiful crispiness to it it's very nice and dry yeah you know
sometimes bacon um can exude a lot of water that's bad
quality bacon in the pan really because it's just been
bulked out with water this didn't do that at all it was really dry nothing came
out of it just the beautiful fats came out of it
exactly what you want to see and the taste is unreal
smoky yep and it packs a punch like my whole mouth is just infused with
bacon and then what you can do with a
breakfast like this it's all about combos so some bacon some beans
i'll crack into some egg yolk
oh man this is one of my favorite breakfasts
ever yes i love starting the day this way
and you get so full yes it takes you through the whole day
that is top quality stuff and that really
sets up this day because it's freezing cold
super hot hearty breakfast that's the end of this video
but we're boosting off a little bit further south straight into starting to
film the next video so we're heading for a dairy farm actually so
get into this breakfast we're staying in the Waikato region and it's going to be wild ooh
yeah time to eat