A fresh new taste of Norfolk Island

A fresh new taste of Norfolk Island

Auckland, 19 February 2013 – While you maybe weren’t looking, some delicious things have been happening on Norfolk Island. The lush and historic external territory of Australia, just 90 minutes from Auckland by air, is emerging as a food lover’s paradise.

The Islanders will tell you, in their delightfully forthright way, that it’s actually an old story. Norfolk’s distance from Australia (1,400 kilometres away to the east) and New Zealand (1,000 kilometres southeast) means there has always been a tradition of fine local food. The island’s fertile soil and gentle subtropical climate provide perfect growing conditions so that nearly all of the island’s fresh produce is locally grown. Undulating grazing lands provide fresh meat, including ‘Norfolk Blue’, a unique breed of gourmet heritage beef. The deep, pristine waters surrounding the island provide the freshest of ocean feasts.

Norfolk, however, goes one better. Well before anyone else thought of it, the island set up its own Government-backed organisation committed to creating a 100% sustainable environment, with farmers trained in sustainable agricultural techniques, including biodynamic farming. The philosophy? Healthy soil, healthy food and a healthy body! The result of this unique ‘paddock to plate’ approach means food tastes just as it should: full of flavour, grown in its natural season and rich with all the right nutrients.

As you’ll discover, the island’s 35-plus eateries have embraced this local bounty of fresh organic produce with seasonal signature dishes. Standards are high, and together with its beautiful environment and relaxed way of life, the island attracts successful chefs from Australia, New Zealand and beyond.

In the last decade too, a lively bunch of artisan food and beverage producers has sprung up on the island, including a boutique brewing company, a distillery producing liqueurs, the producers of Norfolk Blue beef, and Two Chimneys Winery, the latter selling a range of wines including chardonnay, semillon, verdelho and merlot with accompanying platters of local produce that are both a visual and edible feast.

As well as sampling the island’s high quality local and seasonal organic offerings, food lovers can get hands-on experience at Hilli’s Restaurant & Bar’s Mastering Taste Chef School and Garden Tour. At a beautiful property in the island's north, a local chef will show you how to whip up gourmet dishes that include fruit and vegetables sourced from the cooking school’s garden.

You also can’t leave the island without sampling Norfolk’s own cuisine, a unique and distinctively Pacific blend of eighteenth-century English recipes inherited from the first European settlers of Norfolk and their Tahitian wives. Try delicious variations with bananas such as savoury fritters for fish or meat, banana dumplings (known in the local island language as mudda), or slow-baked banana phili served with ‘Norfolk Island gravy’ – fresh cream. Then there’s kingfish marinated in lemon and coconut milk, warm-baked coconut bread and spicy fish curries.

Regardless of what you enjoy during your stay, chances are the fabulously fresh local and seasonal produce will have been grown very close by. Norfolk is after all, as the locals say, the island that has ‘food metres’ instead of food miles.

Fresh, organic, local and seasonal: Norfolk Island is a food lover’s paradise
(See more at theworldofnorfolk.com.au)

Mastering Taste Chef’s School and Cooking Tour. Bookings via Baunti Escapes: www.theworldofbounty.com, facebook.com/hillirestaurantnorfolk

Norfolk Island Brewing Company

Norfolk Island Liquors Pty Ltd and Cascade Soft Drinks

Two Chimneys Winery, www.twochimneywines.nlk.nf

Air New Zealand flies from Auckland to Norfolk Island every Sunday, and also has two direct flights per week from both Sydney and Brisbane. www.airnewzealand.co.nz, airnewzealand.com.au.

ENDS

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