Well-known Kiwi chef Jo Seagar trained as a cordon bleu chef in London and France, before returning home to promote a culinary style involving “maximum effect, minimum effort.” Her 1997 best-selling book You Shouldn't Have Gone To So Much Trouble, Darling caught TVNZ’s attention and Real Food marked her TV debut. The two series covered recipes from sushi to pecan pie. In a 2012 interview with Avenue, Seagar mentioned that the show rated highly, despite Television New Zealand initially telling her that a food show would never screen in primetime.

In this series Chef Peta Mathias (Taste New Zealand) sets off on a culinary journey around the globe - without even having to leave New Zealand. In A Taste of Home Peta meets up with fellow foodies who have settled in Godzone from overseas, and asks them to share their favourite tastes of home. Viewers get to choose from Moroccan stuffed dates, Russian cabaret, bean-filled Brazilian feijoada and 'Pokarekare Ana', sung in Korean. The series devotes one episode each to food from France, India, Russia, Korea, Brazil, North Africa, and the Middle East.

London-born Graham Kerr’s first appearance on NZ telly was in 1960 as an Air Force catering adviser. The RNZAF omelette demonstration was the beginning of a career that would see Kerr become an internationally pioneering TV chef, liberally mixing personality — a patient, slightly naughty uncle, always ready with a risqué quip — and butter, cream or wine-soaked recipes. The Graham Kerr Show was the last series he made in NZ before galloping off overseas, and his worldly sophistication introduced Kiwis to horizons beyond the confines of their own insular cuisine.

Kai Time on the Road premiered in Māori Television’s first year of 2003. It has become one of the channel’s longest running series. Presented largely in te reo and directed and presented for many years by chef Pete Peeti, the show celebrated food harvested from the land, rivers and sea. Kai Time traversed the length and breadth of New Zealand, and ventured into the Pacific. The people of the land have equal billing with the kai, and the korero with them is a major element of the show —  often over dishes cooked on location. Rewi Spraggon succeeded Peeti for the final two seasons.

This series from Kiwi cooking legend Alison Holst is made up of six 15 minute episodes in which Holst cooks a selection of family favourite meals. Taking a relaxed pace, far removed from the typical energetic cooking show format, she talks through some simple recipes, to please even the pickiest eater. Alison Holst Cooks was made in association with Beckett Publishing, to support the release of the cookbook of the same name.

This Greenstone Pictures' series was a mixed plate of reality TV, cooking show and Stage One Anthropology. The (Kiwi) concept is simple: presenter Suzanne Paul invades a house with a camera crew and mystery dinner guest, while restauranteur Varick Neilson cooks the occupants dinner. Special guests included David McPhail, Temuera Morrison, Mike King and Kevin Smith. Two series were screened in 1998 and 1999, with a third screening in 2004.

Hunger for the Wild took Wellington chefs Al Brown and Steve Logan out of their fine dining restaurant and into the wilds of Aotearoa, on a fishing, foraging and hunting culinary adventure. Putting the local in 'locally sourced', each episode involves Al and Steve splitting up and collecting ingredients (and characters) for an end of episode meal. The homegrown and cooked dish is then toasted with a wine selected by Logan. Three series were produced for TVNZ by Peter Young's Fisheye films, winning a 2007 NZ Screen Award and Best Lifestyle Series at the 2009 Qantas Awards.

Regular Māori programmes started on Television New Zealand in 1980 with Koha, a weekly, 30 minute programme broadcast in English. It explored everything from social problems, tribal history, natural history, about weaponry, to the preparation of food, canoe history, carvings and their meanings, language and how it changed through time. It was a window into te ao Māori for Pākekā, and provided a link to urban Māori estranged from their culture. It was the first regular Māori programme to be shown in prime time. 

Chef Cameron Petley was a crowd favourite on MasterChef in 2011 for his homestyle wild food recipes, before being eliminated by a cupcake challenge. Petley got another chance to share his enthusiasm for harvesting and preparing tasty kai onscreen in this cooking show for Māori Television. He shares whānau recipes (from kina omelettes and mussel fritters to pork belly), favourite local markets, and chef’s tips. The series became one of Māori TV's highest rating shows. In the second season Petley travelled to Rarotonga to sample Pacific cuisine.

Oddly Even was the winner of TVNZ's inaugural New Blood Web Series Competition for emerging screen talents. NZ Broadcasting School graduates Isla Macleod and Ashleigh Reid won $100,000 from TVNZ and NZ On Air to turn it into an eight-part web series, after the public voted their pilot episode the best. The comedy centres on chalk and cheese sisters — aspiring health food entrepreneur Liv, and the straight-talking Frankie, who crashes back into Liv's life and demands a room after going AWOL for eight years. Conflict ensues as the sisters can't see eye to eye.