Eating Wild In Hokitika

`Wildly’ exotic specialties like deer penis pate, crisply fried locusts, seagull eggs, crisp pig ears, boiled snails and stallion semen shots make the annual Hokitika Wildfoods Festival in New Zealand, a culinary celebration like none other on the planet

- Sonia Nazareth

It’s a magic word — Hokitika. I mention the name of this beautiful town — on the rugged west coast of New Zealand’s South Island — to the banker seated next to me at the Christchurch airport lounge. His face lights up. His conversation becomes animated. What began in the little town of Hokitika in 1990, as a Wild Food Festival celebrating tastes of the West Coast, now has international travellers beating through the thickets of online websites, in pursuit of tickets. Held annually on a weekend in March, the event has clearly become something of a secular pilgrimage. The banker looks approvingly at my pants with the elastic waistband “You’re going to need them,” he says with a wink. “Pig snouts and lamb hearts have been added this year to the ever-growing menu — that includes old classics like West-Coast seafood and bush fare.”