TOP 50 CAFES 2019 IN ASSOCIATION WITH MINI
This year, when we sat down to start work on our annual Top 50 cafes, the first issue we encountered was a tricky one. What the hell is a cafe in 2019?
There was a time when most people could answer that pretty easily. In New Zealand, a cafe was a smallish place with a bunch of tables and you ordered at the counter. There was a short menu and counter food, and you took a number when you ordered — all things that came from the modern cafe’s whakapapa, which comes from the tea room, the coffee shop and the milk bar.
Times have changed! These days, cafes offer table service — though not all do. Many have a full menu and a wine list; some don’t even serve food. Some close just after lunch and others stay open until the wee small hours. And some of the places on our list are, to all intents and purposes, restaurants, and a couple even made it onto our Restaurant of the Year Top 50 list.
Confused? Don’t be. In the end, we fell back on a few simple ideas: A cafe is more informal than a restaurant. It might serve counter food and snacks; it might have a full menu. It might have table service or it might not. It might have a full kitchen and multiple chefs, or it might have one guy toasting the brioche and churning out the flat whites. (Hopefully, though, not many places these days give you numbers.)
As a result, you’ll notice the list has changed a little this year. There are a bunch of places — such as Daily Daily on Karangahape Rd or Eighthirty — that do little more than serve coffee and snacks. By the same token there are eateries — Amano, for example — that are really restaurants, except for the fact that they have an area where you can wander in and order a coffee and a pastry, too.
We’re okay with that, because we’d have a meeting in all of them. And really, there are two things that tie cafes together. They all serve coffee, and it’s good — we stand behind the coffee at every establishment on this list, and we’re heartened to see the growing shift to soft-brewing methods. But more importantly in an increasingly congested city, they offer a third place, somewhere that’s not home and is not work — a place to meet people, a place to read a book or do a bit of work or even to just stare out the window and think about your to-do list. They are spaces that are at once public and private. And that’s why we celebrate them.
TOP 50 CAFES A-Z
AMANO
66-68 Tyler St, Britomart
Is there a more reliable go-to, day and night, than Amano? Though it’s well known as a first-rate spot for dinner, it’s equally as appealing to brave the crowds for breakfast or lunch (Amano won Best All-day Restaurant in 2019’s Peugeot Restaurant of the Year, BTW). And brave the crowds you will, as three years on from
