A teatowel coffee guide to Wellington
Posted by Robyn on Sunday, 24 Jan 2010
NZ History have recently added an amazing tea towel, thought to be from the mid-1960s, listing the coffee houses of Wellington.
It's very cool to see such a list of classy joints that our forefathers and foremothers ran, making Wellington such a good coffee town.
Only a couple of these places are still in existence today (and the Matterhorn's specialty is no longer "Continental cakes"). I wonder what businesses can now be found in these locations.
(And it's interesting that in the days before the Beehive and the Fern Ball, the icon of Wellington was, er, the National War Memorial, and National Museum and Gallery.)
Here's a map of all the locations.
It would have to be pre-64 as Walkabout was replaced by Downstage Theatre then.
Evidently, the decor was faux-aboriginal demonstrating the poor taste that led to their decline and failure.
While googling a few of these venues, I discovered that the Tete a Tete was a popular spot for Wellington's gay and lesbian community in the 1960s. This puts quite a different perspective on the Tete's speciality: beefburger!
That's awesome. Not many cafes would list Pot Pourri as their speciality these days.
Is that some kind of EDIBLE pot pourri??? How does that differ from a particularly aromatic salad?
Nice effort with the map ... it would be good if someone did it again today ... one for the time capsule?
Here's another map of Wellington cafe locations.
I can remember The Hub in 1958 - 1959 when I was a young swinger and worked at the ANZ Bank in Cuba Street. The Hub was just across the road. I wasted many hours over a cup of strong black coffee with the boyfriend of the time. It was one of the first coffee bars in Wellington and was run by two Eastern European ladies, intent on bringing a bit of culture to Wellington.
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