What the Tourists Want.
Food in New Zealand. Fruit and Cream.

(By M. Mulgan.)

It is not surprising to find, as Mr. Schmitt, General Manager of the Tourist and Publicity Department, tells us, that travellers returning to London from New Zealand comment on certain features of hotel accommodation in this country.

It has always seemed to me that where criticism in this respect can be made the deficiency is due rather to want of imagination or to convention than to fear of expense. We have heard a good deal about the limited number of bath rooms which are, indeed, expensive to build, and we have not yet reached the point where luxury accommodation can be widely provided. We must admit, however, that some expensive hotels, public and private, are ill-equipped in this direction and should provide more bathrooms for the number of guests they cater for at fairly expensive rates.

But the question of food is based on other considerations. In most cases it is not more food, or more expensive food that is wanted, but a different menu and one more distinctive of the country. As one travels beyond New Zealand the fare provided in steamer and hotel runs on stereotyped lines in most places. There is a long and imposing bill of fare for dinner. One struggles through the medley of French and English titles trying to choose a meal that will satisfy both appetite and health. The soups, entrees and joints are followed by a good choice of sweets. Much thought and labour has been spent in the kitchen to make a good showing and provide variety. It apparently seldom occurs to the hotel manager in New Zealand that he might attract his patrons by giving them a fare that was simpler and more typical of the country. The science of food is becoming popular; housewives, especially the younger generation, make a study of it, and try under guidance to provide a fare that will build up a healthy family. The school of Home Science is educating the people not only through its students and trained teachers, but by popular radio talks by members of the Association. Dentists, many of them, take on the duties of dietitians, and recent broadcast talks by Dr. Guy Chapman on the causes of malnutrition was enlightening and salutary.

The burden of all this teaching is that we should get back to nature. We are suffering from over-cooked, over-preserved, and over-refined food. It is simplicity and not elaboration that is needed. It is possible, as Dr. Chapman says, though not desirable, to live healthily on a diet of pure fresh milk and potatoes boiled in their jackets. Fresh fruit, vegetables, whole meal, fish and eggs are desirable.

Now I am not suggesting that our hotels should simplify to the extent of providing a fare of milk and potatoes. But what, in contrast, do we get in most restaurants and hotels? We get a great variety of cooked meats and many of the dishes are re-cooked. We get a limited choice of vegetables that are cooked, not in the continental fashion, succulently retaining their juices, but over-boiled in water which is thrown out with most of their vitamin and mineral content. Fish and eggs are usually procurable, but unattractively served. The bread supplied is white; brown bread may occasionally be obtained on request, but this for the most part is white bread coloured with molasses, not wholemeal. Butter is plentiful and so, as a rule, is milk. But when it comes to fruit, which should be a special feature of this country—or do we grow it only for export?—we fall down badly. A visitor to the Nelson district in the early autumn had her request for fruit for breakfast met, in one hotel after another, by prunes. I have stayed in a good hostel in one of our leading provincial towns in the month of May with apples selling in the shops at 2d. a pound and no fresh fruit was ever put on the table. I had to buy my own fruit and keep it in my bedroom. The fare provided was elaborate and tempting, but scientifically it was defective. A hot week of December was spent in a hotel at Dunedin where it was impossible to get either green salad or fruit for lunch.

American friends who hired a car in Auckland and toured New Zealand for three months reported adversely on these matters before leaving the country. Many things had surprised them. They were in New Zealand throughout a particularly generous fruit harvest. They loved fruit and considered it a main part of their daily diet. But they had to buy their own throughout the tour. They bought cherries in Christchurch and carried

A general view of the New Zealand Court at the Canadian National Exhibition held in Toronto, Canada, August 28th—September 12th, 1936.

page 52 page 53 some for six weeks while they toured the West Coast, finding them still good at the end of that time. “What a gift for export,” was their comment, and they thought the fruitgrowers sadly lacking in enterprise. In Nelson there was a glut of raspberries, and they read in the local papers that the factories could take no more and the raspberry acres were being turned over to calves. But not once in a fortnight's stay were they offered raspberries and cream; instead, dried apricots and prunes. Staying at a well-known hotel in the Rotorua district they gathered blackberries by the roadside and brought them in with a request to have them served with cream — a suggestion which was apparently regarded as a joke by the manager.

Years ago, when we in New Zealand were only just beginning to regard tourists as a source of revenue, an energetic and original woman friend of mine, much engaged in public affairs, rather surprised me by saying, “Do you know how we should get tourists to come here?—feed them! I would have large bowls of cream on the tables in hotels, and lots of nice, fresh fruit. One would tell another and they would come in thousands.” I laughed at the time, but I think that she was right. Is that not largely the secret of France's success as a tourist's country—the fact that farm and garden produce appears abundantly upon even the humblest table, prepared in a way that preserves its appearance, flavour, and nutritive value?

Our visitors have a long sea voyage before they arrive in New Zealand, and no doubt they look forward to the fruits of the earth on arrival. They go to a hotel and what do they find? Practically the same bill of fare as they had on board ship, but not so much fruit and very little cream. Very often the fruit put before them has come in the ship they travelled by—oranges and bananas from the Islands en route, or grapes from California. Now most of them are here in the summer months, and local, fresh fruit should be freely provided. As for cream, I have always thought there is something radically wrong with our dairy industry that cream is not on sale to the public at a moderate price. It seems to me to bear a wrong relation in price to butter. How many of us can afford to buy cream daily at its retail price?

It may seem from what I have written that my object has been to induce our hotel managers to lay themselves out to attract tourists. That is naturally a principal part of their business. But on the other hand charity begins at home, and while I write I am thinking of the travelling public of New Zealand (and it is a large one), and of those of us who are living away from home and dependent on hotels and boarding houses for healthy, comfortable living. I feel certain that the question of food-values and economical management in relation to it have not been studied sufficiently in the places where many people have to live together. It is notorious that in boarding schools, in hospitals, private and public, and indeed in institutions generally, diet is not sufficiently studied. And it is not a matter of expense—it is a matter of fairly elementary knowledge. It is easier and cheaper to scrub potatoes than to peel them; it would surely be a saving of fuel to cook other vegetables so that one was not left in doubt as to whether one was eating turnip, cabbage, or marrow. Fresh fruit, though not always cheap, needs no cooking. So many people are now acquainted with food values and the necessity for a balanced diet that there is no doubt about the success of restaurants or hotels which were courageous enough to break away from conventional standards and provide natural, healthy food.

I should suggest that the School of Domestic Science at Otago University be asked for suggestions in this matter and that such information be made available to the managers of hotels and other institutions. If some association of hotels and restaurants could be formed on these lines, they could well be given a distinctive mark in the way that A.A. hostels or the Trust Houses in England are distinguishable. They would become known as national restaurants giving attractive and natural fare that specially belong to the country, and I believe that should such distinction be made, the old-fashioned managers would need to fall in line or go out of business.

“Smokers' throat” and other ailments familiar to lovers of the weed should not be ignored as of no consequence. If you find smoking is attended with throat-irritation and is losing its attraction you will be wise to change your tobacco, for in all probability the root of the trouble is excess of nicotine. Brands innumerable there are for pipe or cigarette but unfortunately they are not always safe smoking. Of outstanding merit, it may be added, is our toasted New Zealand tobacco, the purest and certainly the safest manufactured. Its beautiful flavour and appealing fragrance commend it to all smokers, while its unique quality of being almost without nicotine enables it to be indulged in with the utmost freedom and no risk whatever. The four celebrated brands, Riverhead Gold, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, and Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead) owe their great popularity to their high quality. Yet they are all moderately priced. But—as usual—their success has led to the appearance of imitations. So when you buy be careful to see you get what you ask for.^*

New Zealand Government Railways section of the New Zealand display at the Canadian National Exhibition, held in Toronto, Canada, August 28th—September 12th, 1936.