When you leave your home country for any length of time it's natural to look for the tastes of home. As luck would have it, it's not too difficult to find German eats and treats in Wellington as Germany and New Zealand share a love of good food and drink.

Bread

I left Germany fourteen years ago, spending 13 years in small-town England and the last 6 months in New Zealand's capital city. What has never left me in all those years is the desire for good German bread: sourdough and rye, heavy set and crusty. It keeps for weeks and—just getting a bit dry—is still perfectly edible if you have the will and good teeth. I call it "real bread", as opposed to the "white fluffy stuff" that has more E numbers in it than I care to think about and that Bruce loves to munch (you can't really say "get his teeth into" as this action is impossible, if you know what I mean). I took to baking my own bread some years ago in the UK, after a fellow German gave me a sourdough starter and an earthenware baking pot, the latter helping to imitate the heat patterns of a bread oven on a small scale and turning out perfect loaves every time. Needless to say that the baking pot is big, heavy, cumbersome and not suitable to be transported half way around the world to New Zealand.

Luckily New Zealand has had a long-standing history of German immigrants and they brought "real bread" with them. Wellington boasts at least two (if not three) major outlets of German-style breads: Arobake Schweizer Bäckerei, a Swiss bakery in Aro Valley with outlets in some other stores; Brezelmania, trading from Petone, Lower Hutt and Thorndon; and I have not tried Pandoro's sourdough loaves yet, but will keep you posted. Arobake have this wonderful rye and caraway loaf that takes me right back to my roots, as we ate that style of bread in my family as long as I can remember. If I want Bruce to be able to share my bread I buy Brezelmania's Badisch Dunkel, a dark softish bread with loads of sunflower seeds. It has a bit of that fluffyness that he likes, but it also keeps well and sustains me with a week's worth of sandwiches for lunch. Both Arobake and Brezelmania have lots more to offer with German/Swiss cakes and delicacies. Even baked cheesecake is obtainable and rumour has it that on Saturdays the Petone Shop has Black Forest Gateau to offer (will follow that one up, too). So as you can see, that is one basic need well taken care of.

German treats found in Wellington

Wurst and sausage

Have bread, need spread! For those of you who know German Wurstbrot, you know that we like sausage meats on our bread. While salami is easy to get hold of, other German cold meats are more difficult to obtain. Having been introduced to the Moore Wilson fresh food market helped a lot as they do a nice line in German liver pate and Italian Mortadella (also available from La Bella Italia, Petone). I am dreaming about Black Forest Ham as we speak.... Nutella, however, is easily found on supermarket shelves.

What about Bratwurst then, do I hear you ask? After years of having to buy Lidl & Aldi sausages in the UK (English sausages contain very little meat and a lot of stuff that should not be in a sausage) to get some memory of what a sausage might taste like I am in sausage heaven. Meat on Tory do an excellent line in sausages, ranging from the exotic such as duck and shiitake mushroom, to the more mundane, but always excellent and full of flavour. At Moore Wilson's you get Island Bay Butcher's interesting sausages and even some ordinary supermarket sausages are rather good.

Coffee and cake

Wellington has also got a reputation for good coffee, but I had to overcome a few difficulties when we arrived. I like filter coffee: you know—plastic cone, filter paper, hot water over ground coffee. The supermarket has even got my favourite German brand—the one that I have imported into the UK for many years by the packet, hoping that I would get back to Germany before the stash ran out. And here you just get it in the supermarket. Great stuff! But I had yet to find a filter cone. The papers are easy to come by as they are also used in machines, but I did not want to buy an expensive machine. We are only here for one year and what should I do with the machine then? Luckily someone told me about The Dutch Shop in Petone. And there, amongst huge golden wheels of Dutch cheese, Dutch knick-knacks, and a good selection of foodstuffs that we share with our Dutch neighbours, were the plastic filter cones I was after. Finally, coffee "my style". Needless to say that I bought a further handful of things in the Dutch shop that are otherwise hard to come by: sachets of vanilla sugar, sachets of blancmange powder (secret ingredient in the aforementioned baked cheesecakes), Haribo Goldbears, a particular style of biscuits and, as it was Christmas-time, a Marzipan Stollen. Arobake also had a Stollen and we used a photograph of this as our Christmas greeting-card picture. I even saw special kinds of chocolate-covered Lebkuchen (gingerbread) in some of the shops at Christmas. The other day Easter confectionary started to arrive on the shelves and I am pleased to see that Lindt has cornered a good share of the market. I think I will want an Easter Egg this year.... (dark chocolate please!). Chocolate-covered Marzipan eggs have also been spotted.

Stollen from Arobake

Liquid bread

A love of cold beer is another one of those things that New Zealanders and Germans share: unlike the English, who still drink the stuff at room temperature and complete with chemicals. While I cannot claim to know anything about beer (mainly because as a general rule I don't actually like it much) I know what I like or not: so far I have certainly enjoyed cold beers in the light wheat-style after a long hot walk, say. My personal favourite is Speight's Harvest, a golden-coloured liquid with apricot flavour (OK, possibly some chemicals in that, too). I also like Monteith's Summer Ale and the more malty Tui brew. I have yet to try the offerings of Mac's, the Malthouse, and smaller breweries, but as I said I am not that keen on beer anyway, so don't get your hopes up about a comprehensive beer review. If you want the real thing there is a good selection of German beers, wines, and spirits (including a much needed Kirschwasser for medicinal purposes) at Regional Wines and Spirits near the Basin Reserve. Although I do not know why I would want German wine when I can have the excellent New Zealand sauvignon blancs or pinot noirs.

Dining out

Lower Hutt has a German restaurant (Cafe Munich) and I think I am getting ready for a visit there. Until now I have not felt the urge too strongly as there is such a variety of good food here and we are exploring as much as we can without increasing our girth.

Do I miss anything? Well, maybe the Black Forest ham, but I would hardly complain about that. So certainly in my geography, Wellington is very near to Germany, much closer in fact than the UK.

Those with a decidedly English bent can check out Cool Britannia on Taranaki St; for Italian-lovers there's La Bella Italia in Petone.

Update 01.04.07: Black Forest ham can be found at the Dutch Shop in Petone!

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