If you love food, chances are you enjoy the stories behind your food, including the way historic eateries preserve and highlight local heritage. Queenstown’s historic hotels and restaurants offer traditional and contemporary cuisine in storied settings, making them an unmissable part of the unique food experience you’ll find in Queenstown.
Queenstown’s Rich Culinary History
Māori people began travelling to Lake Whakatipu on seasonal hunting expeditions around 800 years ago. The area was rich in mahinga kai, Māori customary food gathering sites. People hunted the region’s eels and birds, and gathered plants such as aruhe, the underground rhizomes of bracken, cabbage tree stems, and seasonal greens. When Māori settled more permanently in the area – Queenstown Gardens is the site of a Māori pā – they would have planted the kūmara, yams, and taro they introduced to New Zealand.
In the late 1850s, the first European colonisers began to arrive in the region. William Rees was one of the first settlers to establish a farm, with a flock of sheep and a boat to bring supplies from the south end of the lake. Food would have been basic, and the region would have continued to be a remote rural backwater, were it not for the 1860s gold rush. In the first weeks of the rush, Rees was the only source of food for miners working around Lake Whakatipu. But where gold appears, commerce follows. By early 1864 there were 18,000 miners in the region, and seventeen hotels, along with a throng of temporary provision shops and bakeries, had sprung up to feed and water the crowd. Chinese goldminers in Arrowtown planted vegetables and sold their extras, supplying fresh veg to the goldfields.
One early (but not very delicious) Queenstown food story is about a German immigrant known as Charlie the Baker, who became tired of catering for a guest with a huge appetite. One evening, his visitor complimented Charlie on his tasty stew and Charlie told him it was all due to the lovely, fat, juicy rat he’d caught that morning. The guest left the next day.
The first vineyard in Queenstown was planted in 1864 by miner John Desire Feraud. He established Monte Cristo winery near Clyde, earning praise here and in Australia for his efforts. Queenstown then had to wait until the 1980s for local visionaries to pioneer our modern wine industry and provide Queenstown with its own distinctive wine.
For over 100 years, most New Zealand immigrants were from the UK, so plain British food was common. You’d be served the classic Kiwi roast meat, and three veg. Queenstown’s isolated location meant people had to be self-sufficient, and many locals would have been good at growing a few veggies, brewing, preserving, and baking.
Until 1981 Queenstown's population was less than 3,500. Today 29,000 people live here. In the last forty years people have moved here from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Pacific, the Middle East, and South America. Each group brought their own regional culinary traditions, and now Queenstown’s restaurant scene is an international melting pot, with everything from a Brazilian patisserie to street food from Asia, and Polynesian fusion food.
