(photograph © Kiwidutch)
This part of my retrospective journal of our New Zealand tour has us still in Paeroa, the rain is still tipping it down and by now a van load of Kiwidutch tummies are rumbling.
We are on the lookout for something easy and fairly quick, with close-by parking so that I don’t have to negotiate too many puddles with the crutches.
Just a short distance after the war memorial we spy just the place… a café, diner sort of place and there is parking almost directly across the street so that will do nicely.
It’s called the “Tui Coffee Lounge” and is housed in an old fashioned shop with a corrugated iron verander out the front over the pavement.
Actually I’d lay odds on the possibility that probably this building used to be an old fashioned supermarket or dairy in decades past, one of the ones like the “4-Square” variety because they too have this very distinctive shape and style. In fact their style within New Zealand became so iconic that there are even books made documenting the remaining ones that are still dairy’s and supermarkets.
… and to explain: a Dairy is a small corner shop that stocks groceries and is open not only during the day but often early in the morning, later at night, and at weekends, in small towns they were the supermarket as well, but they are definitely the place were you would head to pick up a newspaper, and ice-cream, a hot pie from the pie warmer and any small grocery item that you’d run out of at home and needed in a hurry.
It’s plain and functional inside, a little sparse perhaps: the right hand side full of cabinets of food and drinks and the left hand side with rows of tables and seats… but it’s dry, comfortable enough and a great place to have a really “kiwi lunch”. Even a first glance at the food has my heart singing too, as many of the items I see in the cabinets transport me back with memories of my Grandma’s kitchen and her amazing trays of baking.
Himself and the kids spy a well stocked pie warmer cabinet so they like it here already too… but before I show you the food, let’s take a little peek at the place…
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
No, Sorry Little Mr…. Not a car you can play with…. (it’s a door-stop).
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
