Sushi is Auckland's street food

Sushi restaurant at the train station in Auckland

After five months of traveling I still try to stick to my self-imposed rule to eat what the locals eat. In Asia, I often felt deprived of my home food so much that I amended my rule to allow myself to eat in a Western restaurant about once a week to satiate my desire for salads and breads. I discovered that Pizza Hut is a good choice because I can always get a good salad with a small pizza.

In Australia and New Zealand the food is so similar to my home food that I don't have a problem eating whatever the locals eat. I still like to try local specialties and in Auckland, the local food is definitely sushi. There are so many sushi fast food restaurants everywhere it's almost like sushi is their street food. You can find a sushi restaurant at the train station so travelers can pick up a sushi meal instead of a sandwich to eat on the road. I also encountered a group of school children on a field trip where I saw that some of them had sushi meals in their packed lunches.

Sushi meal

Those of you who know me or who have been reading this blog for a while probably know that I'm not a fish lover. In fact, I hate fish. Or I used to think so. Travel changed me in at least one aspect. I now eat fish. I like sushi. What happened? Thinking back, when I arrived in Asia, there was often a fishy ingredient in my food, such as fish sauce or oyster sauce. I could either eat it or go hungry. And I probably got accustomed to the fishy taste to the point where it doesn't bother me any more. So I've started eating and liking fish.

Speaking of how travel changed me, I have another issue to address before I return home and that is my newly developed addiction to tropical fruit. I have grown so accustomed to eating mango or pineapple or other tropical fruits every day that when I walked into a supermarket in New Zealand and passed the apples and pears and peaches I started looking for the fruit. Where are the mangoes and pineapples and rambutans?