These days sushi is so commonplace it is found in petrol stations and supermarkets - but rewind 26 years and Queenstown was getting its first Japanese restaurant.
Minami Jujisei, is one of the resort's longest-serving restaurants but director and chef Koji Honda remembers a time when few people in New Zealand knew what sushi was.
''We used to have to tell people what sushi is and what sashimi is but now everybody knows.''
Mr Honda learnt to make sushi in his native Tokyo and after working for a busy sushi bar, heard New Zealand had begun to catch on to Japanese food.
At the time, he had the choice of Auckland, Christchurch or Queenstown, ''so I chose Queenstown'' because, coming from the megacity of Tokyo he quite fancied a taste of ''the countryside''.
''I was supposed to stay only one year but really enjoyed it.''
Aside from a stint away from the restaurant from 1995 to 1999, he has been involved with it since he arrived from Tokyo in 1988 and is now a director and chef.
The restaurant was established in 1987 by a group of restaurateurs.
Today, Mr Honda and Neil Fraser are the restaurant's directors and it claims to be the oldest Japanese restaurant in New Zealand.
Japanese tour groups needed to be lured into Queenstown in those days, because they stopped mainly in Auckland, Christchurch and Rotorua.
The New Zealand spinoff from Japan's uncertain alliance in the 1991 Gulf War was the flow south of Japanese tourists who saw Oceania as a safe option for travel.
This and New Zealand promoting itself overseas ''started the boom''.
The boom fizzed between 2004 and 2010 but then the Christchurch earthquakes, Japanese earthquake and a warm Queenstown winter followed.
Mr Honda said many Queenstown businesses were lucky to have survived 2011.
Now, the restaurant is seeing more and more Chinese tourists, coupled with a resurgence of the Japanese market.
Mr Honda said the restaurant was popular with Chinese visitors and, at present, Queenstown was experiencing a boom in Chinese tourists.
Next Chinese New Year, on January 31, would be a busy one for Queenstown, he said.
On the wall above his sushi-making station hangs a photo of the restaurant filled with water during the 1999 flood. The water came halfway up the restaurant's walls and it was forced to close for four months.
The day the flood occurred was Mr Honda's first day back at Minami Jujisei. The restaurant later reopened and there has not been a flood on that scale since.
Nowadays, Queenstown boasts four Japanese restaurants, in addition to Thai, Indian and other ethnic establishments.
''Queenstown restaurants are high quality because of all the tourists. We have to make the food perfect,'' Mr Honda said.
