Ethicare Resourcing
A student city eats well

Food, shopping & the everyday

Palmerston North Guide · Chapter 8 of 9

The city’s food reputation lags well behind the reality, and the reason is the university. Twenty thousand students and a research community make a market for good, cheap, varied food that a city of ninety thousand would not otherwise support.

Eating out

George Street
The city’s dining lane — a good strip of small restaurants and bars a minute from The Square, and the answer when someone asks where to go.
Broadway Avenue & The Square
Cafés, bakeries and bistros around the green centre. The everyday lunch and coffee territory.
Student value
Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern and Pacific food at prices that reflect who eats it. Some of the best-value eating in New Zealand.
Coffee
Take this seriously: New Zealand coffee is excellent and Palmy holds its own. Local roasters, and a flat white in a suburban café will beat the best in most British cities.

Markets and what the region grows

The Manawatū is a farming plain, and the food culture follows from it. The Saturday farmers’ market in the city is the weekend fixture — produce, meat, bread, cheese and coffee, and half the neighbourhood.

Twenty minutes north, Feilding is a proper country town with a famous Friday market and working saleyards. It is worth going once as an outing and then repeatedly for the food. Between the two you can eat almost entirely from within thirty kilometres.

The coast half an hour west gives you the other half of the larder: fishing off the beach, whitebait in season on the river mouths, and a strong local culture around both. Rules on species, size and quantity are real and enforced.

Groceries and the practical stuff

All the main supermarket chains, plus large-format retail on the northern edge of the city. Food in New Zealand is expensive by British or Australian standards — that is national rather than local, and it is the adjustment people mention most.

For specialist ingredients, the student population is your ally: there are Asian, Indian and halal grocers here well out of proportion to the city’s size, and a reasonable range beyond that. It is not Auckland, so if a particular cuisine is central to how your family eats, check before you commit — the national chapter Finding your feet & your people covers where to look and which communities are established here.

Friends and their families sitting on the living-room floor for an Onam sadya served on banana leaves
Onam at home in Palmerston North: Rezon and friends from the hospital, with their families, around a sadya on banana leaves. Read their story →

The rhythm of the week

Term time and summer are different cities
In term the place hums — live music, sport, events, full cafés. From December to February it empties and slows right down. Locals rather like both.
Shops close early
Most retail winds down by 5.30 or 6pm, supermarkets run later, and Sunday is quieter than you’ll be used to.
Sport is the social glue
This is a rugby city with a national rugby museum to prove it, but also netball, cycling, hockey, football, running and cricket. Joining a club is the fastest way to know people.
Culture is closer than you think
Te Manawa — museum, art gallery and science centre in one — plus a real calendar of theatre, festivals and touring shows at the arena. For the biggest acts, Wellington.
Limitations
  • Retail is functional rather than exciting. Serious shopping means Wellington or online.
  • The best touring music and major exhibitions stop at Wellington, an hour and fifty minutes’ drive away.
  • Very specific imported groceries can need an order in. Most people end up with a Wellington or Auckland run a few times a year.

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