From chocolate mixed with bee pollen to craft beer infused with deer penis, this town on New Zealand’s South Island has a lot to offer for the adventurous eater.
You may not have heard of the New Zealand town of Dunedin, but it packs a lot of flavour. Located at one of the southernmost points of the South Island, Dunedin is the sort of place that seems designed for hearty drinks in front of a fire, a gourmet picnic in its green woods and experimental degustation.
With a population of just under 130,000 but sprawling across 3,314 square kilometres, Dunedin is small enough to feel like a genuine getaway from big city life, but not so small that your options are restricted. Dotted with 19th-century buildings, an NRL stadium and university, it’s a big city bundled into this southern pocket of New Zealand.
Along with food, Dunedin’s natural environment is its calling card for visitors. Be prepared for bracing fresh air while wandering the intense greenery of the surrounding hills, where huge parcels of land are dotted with trees and bushes, or take a scenic train ride with Dunedin Railways through Taieri Gorge, a 40-kilometre-long canyon of exceptional natural beauty in Central Otago’s wilderness.
Dunedin is emerging as a fresh foodie destination, where local produce is mixed with international flavours and a broad range of creative culinary influences. One of the town’s newer restaurants, Moiety, illustrates this “local but global” approach. Created inside the historic Terminus building, a former 19th-century hotel, Moiety has a strong Japanese influence that is expressed through its dedication to using fresh, local ingredients.
Chef Sam Gasson, along with partner and head of house Kim Underwood, opened Moiety in 2018 after spending six years abroad, including stints in Europe and Australia. Both Dunedin natives, they returned home to create something that reflected their own approach to food.
“I’ve always really enjoyed Japanese food, with some of the chefs I worked with during my early days being really big on Japanese, so that came through to me. When I travelled to Japan, it really reaffirmed what I loved about the food, their techniques and respect for the ingredients,” says Gasson.
Moiety’s interior is designed to reflect its menu; inside, exposed brick walls both contrast but also blend with the otherwise sleek, minimalist design of colour-block padded chairs and benches, and Scandinavian-style touches. That contrast is repeated in its stripped-back menu, which features just a single five-course degustation and a handful of snacks.
Using as much local produce as is practical, Moiety rotates its dishes regularly, with at least one dish a week making way for a fresh spin on its hybrid Japanese cuisine. “We want to keep it interesting for our customers; it’s a small, concise menu and we already have a lot of loyal, regular customers so it’s all about keeping it interesting and getting their feedback,” Gasson says.
Sitting at the bar, which overlooks the kitchen, I’m served a delicate plate of salmon that’s been gently grilled, with a brush of nori paste and a garnish of thinly sliced radish, laid out to mimic the scales of the fish. The salmon melts in the mouth, with the nori paste giving it an umami whack that makes it scrumptious.
For dessert, the rather opaquely titled “chocolate peanut butter, milk, mandarin” comes out as a chocolate and peanut butter bar of semifreddo that’s topped with a crunchy milk powder and droplets of intense mandarin gel. It’s fresh, creamy and exquisite. When creating new dishes, Gasson lets what local produce is seasonal at the time drive his creativity, saying: “There are no limitations to what we can do.”
Booming breweries
Dunedin’s booming brewery scene is full of contrasts, from small, highly experimental outlets to local craft breweries that have grown into big businesses.
Emerson’s is a craft brewery that kicked off with craft-sized goals but has grown into one of the giants of the New Zealand beer scene. Respected late English beer journalist Michael Jackson even named Emerson’s 1812 India Pale Ale as one of the top 500 beers in the world.
Cementing its reputation as a big player, Emerson’s opened a custom-designed brewery that’s also home to a restaurant, bar and cellar room. As well as being a practical, multipurpose space, it doubles as a homage to the brand’s humble roots and its connection to Dunedin. Mementos from the brand’s early days dot the wall, including a handwritten note from founder Richard Emerson to his grandmother, stating that he wanted to one day own his own pub. Although it has an industrial design, much work has been done to give the restaurant and bar side of the building a cosy, vintage-inspired look. There are dark woods, plush couches and atmospheric lighting. Its broad but refined menu matches with Emerson’s brews, much as wines have traditionally been matched with food.
A popular option is the six-brew sampler, which comes with a mix of its popular regulars and seasonal offerings. The highlight for me is the low-hops, Chinese-inspired Gaitan Dragon, which has a tingle of spice flavour.
On the other end of the scale is New New Brewery, which at just three years old, has the adventurous spirit and devil-may-care attitude that matches its young age perfectly. Set up in a small warehouse that’s recently welcomed a new beer garden, its design mimics its unorthodox approach. Head brewer Brendan Bransgrove has a knack for taking the most random of ingredients and finding a way to make them not only palatable but tasty.
During my visit, I’m presented with the option of trying its smoked eel stout – that’s not just its name, but also its key ingredient. With the same warm amber glow of most brews, it looks fine, but what does it taste like? I gulp down a mouthful, waiting for a fishy taste to plunder my mouth… but there is none. It has the smokiness, and a saltiness to it, that makes it unusual but surprisingly drinkable.
Manager Dallas Synnott says smoked eel is by no means the most unusual ingredient that’s been used. That honour goes to… deer penis. “It was very drinkable,” Synnott says as she laughs. “We obviously had to warn vegans but it was a nice drink.
“We’re called New New because we like invention and continuously creating something new. Our head brewer always has at least one experimental brew going on; he’s like a chef, he just loves to invent new things,” she says. “He uses a lot of fruit and seasonal produce in his beers – like our chilli pilsner – and makes lovely sours, like peaches, nectarines and cherries. Anything is possible.”
Crazy for chocolate
Another craft scene that’s taken off in Dunedin is chocolate. Ocho Chocolate has taken the principle of single origin and put it into chocolate bars. Its cacao beans are sourced from Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Fiji in the South Pacific, and are then brought to Dunedin to be crafted into its chocolate bars.
Ocho’s marketing manager, Anna McDonald, explains that the different types of cacao beans provide distinctively different flavours. “We roast the beans at a lower temperature to maintain the flavour of their origin, and all our bars are made from single origin beans, so you get the flavour profile from where it came from, much like wine,” she says.
Tasting their dark chocolate bars, there’s a big difference in their taste, depending on where their beans were grown. I take a bite of the 66 per cent Cacao PNG, which has a real punch of fruitiness to it and is extremely enjoyable to eat. The 100 per cent Cacao Solomon is perhaps for the more adventurous chocolate-lover; its only ingredient is cacao and it’s therefore extremely rich and dense.
McDonald says the trend in craft chocolate is getting stronger as more people, including travellers, want to know where their food comes from and what went into making it. “We feel really passionate about using local products and pushing the boundaries, experimenting with different flavours,” she says.
Unwrapping one of their Beekeeper bars – milk chocolate mixed with bee pollen, New Zealand Manuka honey and puffed amaranth – what started off as a small bite quickly advances to my almost frenzied eating of the whole bar. The smooth, silkiness of the milk chocolate and the sweet-but-not-too-sweet punch of the honey makes it the sort of chocolate worth flying to Dunedin for. The flavours of Dunedin are wild but refined and reflect Dunedin’s natural creativity. And they’ll stay with you long after you leave.
Alana Schetzer
