When looking for restaurants:

Yelp is NOT your go to app in either Australia or New Zealand. There’s SOME reviews, but not many. You’re going to want rely on Trip Advisor, which for some reason is preferred by the locals.

Aussie Food Products I like:

I’ve now spent 4 whole months in Australia and have discovered a few products/brands I wish I could find back home. Am listing them here, just because, and to remind myself (and my travel partner) for what to stock up on next time….

SO YUMMY! This Lentil soup is sold in the cold “prepared section” of either Woolworths or Coles depending on the town… I’ve noticed its rare for them BOTH to be carrying it, and I’ve not yet found a town where one or the other of them doesn’t have it — This includes New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT/Canberra, Queensland, and South Australia. All of the soups from this brand have nothing in them you can’t pronounce. The Lentil is vegetarian, low-fat, low cal, high fiber, and filling. It costs around $6.50 AUD/$4.68 USD for 2 servings of 200 calories each (or one big meal, about 400 calories) … which is a bit pricey for grocery store soup, but is SO good that if a restaurant were to serve it to you at twice the price, you’d be perfectly happy.  AND it’s almost better cold than hot, in my opinion… so great to sip on hot Aussie days. Oh, and it’s KOSHER … the whole brand is (not that it’s important for me, but still… I have friends who do care). Their other soups are good… but this one is hands down my favorite… enough that I wish I could get it in the USA. I could live on this stuff.

 

For my fellow La Croix Water addicts:
I’m sorry, but it’s not sold here, yet.

Firstly, when it comes to flavored waters in Australia pretty everything is either lime, lemon or berry…. not a lot of flavor options. Only other options I’ve seen so far, which are MUCH harder to find are strawberry and peach.

And you need to be REALLY careful because Australia is FULL of flavored waters that say “no sugar,” but then you look and they’ve got artificial sweeteners in it… or it’ll say “no artificial sweeteners” and then they go and put in Stevia or some other “natural” no calorie sweetener … which science has proven are JUST as bad as for you as the fake ones — people who consume artificial sweeteners tend to be fatter than people who just consume sugar even when consuming the same amount of calories overall, something about it confuses your brain’s control over your metabolism. A sort of boy who cried wolf type phenomena

This brand is sort of cross between La Croix and that vitamin water … and can be kind of pricy as a result… I’m talking one bottles costs the same as La Croix 12 pack. It’s water with some flavor and a few vitamins thrown in, and nothing else.  Their other flavors are also good, but this is my favorite.

A cheaper option is Mount Franklin’s … which also sells flavored water, but this one is a bit harder to find. For some reason small over price bottles of it in convenience stores, or impulse sections of grocery stores are fairly common, but BIG bottles of it in the water isles of same are HARD to find. My favorite flavor for this is the strawberry, but it’s impossible to find in large bottles (but the preferred flavor in small bottles in the refrigerated section that cost the same as the big ones).. not the lemon, or lime which are easier…. the flavor currently to look for in the BIG bottles which cost the same as the small ones (BOGGLE) is the mixed berry flavor

A third option, when I can’t find the other two, is this schweppes… which when they do have it is by far your cheapest option. Usually costs about $1.40 AUD which is also lemon or lime mostly… which I don’t like. I like the raspberry flavor, which is semi-common, or the peach, which is VERY rare.

 

 

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My travel partner, LOVES this cereal. Its high in fiber, low in salt, free of all sorts of nasty chemicals and actually quite tasty. He lives on the stuff ,and I’ll occasionally steal a handful to chomp on as reasonably healthy snack food.

According to him, unlike the British version the Aussie version is low in salt. It also comes in apricot flavor, if you can find it. Wild berry is the common flavor.

 

 

Aussie audities to remember:

1) In Australia Distilled water is often called demineralized water, and instead of being in the baby aisle like in the states, it’s usually in the laundry isle (to use when ironing). Me, I use it for my Nettipot…. and NO they don’t sell it at the pharmacy… in fact at the pharmacy, which is where they sell the salts in measured packets, they have NO IDEA what you’d even use distilled water for. Here in Australia they just go through the whole hassle of boiling tap water for 5 minutes, letting it cool and then using it.

2) In Australia bread comes with butter. IF you order a deli sandwich with Italian salmi and mustard, or roast beef, etc., they’ll put butter on the bread… became … say it with me… “in Australia bread comes with butter.” You will need to say “NO BUTTER” when ordering sandwiches if you don’t want it.

 

 

New Zealand stuff:

firstly, most of what holds true in Australia is also true in NZ, and with the exception of my Lentil soup, most Aussie brands can be found in New Zealand

1. NZ again does not have distilled water at pharmacies… however it DOES has a brand of distilled water that’s sold in the bottled water aisle of many grocery stores
   
2. Fish in NZ is NOT sold filleted! It’s truly bizarre but fillet’s with no bones and no skin do NOT EXIST!!!! And when I bitched about it to locals they looked at me like I had screw loose (as in none of them knew it DOES exist in other countries).
3. My favorite ice cream bar brand (possibly ever), is THIS one. Both my travel partner and I were VERY sad when we left the country that we’d not be able to eat it again (and there wasn’t any in the airport, I SEARCHED for it). There are more than a few flavor options we were both bowled over by how good each of them was. And a lot of the flavors promoted are native to NZ and Australia tastes, like Doris Plum.