Shameless Food Porn Post

Spicy Squid Donburi

Different $1 roll sushi from Umiya.  The Pineapple and Cream Cheese seems to be a Pacific-specific.

Vege Burger from Burgerfuel, featuring pumpkin patty, beetroot, and aioli.  Note the "Doofer" you can put together to hold the burger.

Penguin Gummies!  Surprisingly fruity.

Shamefully, I don't actually remember what was in this soup.  It may have been lamb and curry from the food court's Indonesian place.

Three-dollar bag of fruit from the farmer's market.

Kati Roll

Yuzu Shio Ramen.  Yuzu, I learned, is a citrus fruit.

What I got from the Khmer noodle place we joked about planning on going to but never actually going to.  Well, we actually went.  This dish was three four-letter words, one of them probably for the delicious sausage bits.

Golden Kiwi.  Ironically, I took this when I still unknowingly had my camera's blue filter on, so the kiwi looks more green than in real life.  Note the unfuzzy skin, though.

A bento lunch, bought partially for the presentation.

Ika (Squid) Sushi.

Uni (Sea Urchin) Sushi.  This one was actually terrible and expensive.  Like if the scent of drain cleaner was a taste.  I am told not all uni is like this.

Our grand total of plates from the conveyor belt sushi place.

Ox and beef tripe hot pot soup.  Uniquely spicy, uniquely textured, uniquely chewy.

Thai Tom Kha soup.  The spicy coconut broth was like ambrosia.

Ian and my Valentine's day dinner at Thai Me Up.  The rice came in hearts.  My dish, Red Paradise Duck, came in a boat dish, while Ian's, Amazon Adventurer, came in a duck dish.  Mine was a red curry with broccoli, tomato, grape, pineapple, and lychee.

The Otara Polynesian Market

Sadly, this food cart was not selling this SPAM sushi...thing.

This looks brown and bland, but this Samoan food from the Polynesian market was actually mouthwateringly delicious.  (We got bewildered/impressed stares and comments from Pacific islanders for trying it, though.)  The thing on the left is 'Ota Ika, which is raw fish marinated in lemon juice and coconut, plus chopped onions, all in a coconut shell.  It was the creamy consistency of an island pot-pie, except that doesn't make it sound as delicious as it was.  On the right is half a baked taro root.  Not super flavorful, but warm and nourishing.

The sushi and sashimi dish from Industrial Zen.  The most flamboyant food presentation I've ever had.  That is an actual shell in the middle.

Omelet Rice.  This picture does not do justice to just how huge this pile of seasoned rice with egg covering it was.  I should not have eaten it all, but how I did.

Van's fancy mango birthday cake.

Pavlova (a New Zealand meringue dessert) with passionfruit.  My host dad made it my last night there.

Fergberger in Queenstown.  It was worth the half-hour wait for this monster.  Mine was called "Sweet Bambi," which was a venison burger with plum chutney.