Die-hard Espres­so­holic fans seem to be hap­py that it will con­tin­ue in a new loca­tion, tak­ing over from Dorothy’s Patis­serie in Cuba St. There are still grum­blings about its pre­vi­ous loca­tion being tak­en over by “anoth­er godaw­ful Courte­nay Place bar”, but there are signs that its replace­ment, “Enig­ma”, might not be anoth­er Shoot­ers or Elec­tric Avenue. For a start, the sign in the win­dow describes it as a “café/bar”, and the paint­ing going on inside seems to have a sim­i­lar graf­fi­ti theme to the old place. Some have even said that there are links to the old Espres­so­holic man­age­ment, so per­haps some of what­ev­er it was that peo­ple saw in the place will remain, for bet­ter or worse. But are we to expect a sound­track of Gre­go­ri­an chants and shakuhachi sam­ples?

There are plen­ty of oth­er changes going on in the bar and café world, and it’s not all doom & gloom. I’ll keep you in on the gos­sip after the jump.

Is Caf­fé Ital­iano the new Mojo? We rather like their upper Cuba St loca­tion, and when they took over the old Bran­don St Café it was refresh­ing to have some­where in suit­ville that knew that pani­ni don’t have to be manky lit­tle slabs of MDF. They’ve now popped up in the Majorib­anks St space that was briefly a deli/café called Zest, and it looks like they’re set­ting up a fourth café in the old Meat on Tory.

Speak­ing of Tory St, my anten­nae have picked up rumours that the for­mer car rental place below Hawthorn Lounge is to be con­vert­ed into a restau­rant. Tel-Boy Serepisos has just about fin­ished his archi­tec­tur­al mas­ter­work next door, and while there’s no sign of life in the ground floor spaces just yet, at least one of them was always intend­ed to be a bar and/or restau­rant. It’ll be years before any­thing hap­pens on the old Il Casi­no site, but word is that café oper­a­tors are already inter­est­ed in some of the ground floor spaces. If the Cur­rent Eco­nom­ic Cli­mate does­n’t have us all lin­ing up out­side soup kitchens, it looks like Tory St will devel­op into quite a sub­stan­tial eat­ing & drink­ing des­ti­na­tion.

One more sign of that is that the for­mer Lati­nos, which closed a while back, will be become a Te Aro out­post of New­town’s Ami­gos. Plen­ty of oth­er recent­ly vacat­ed spaces have been con­vert­ed and reopened since my pre­vi­ous post, includ­ing Koi (for­mer­ly Copi­ta), Fusion (a sup­pos­ed­ly “Bol­ly­wood” bar in the old Tarana­ki St San­ta Fe space), Hole in the Wall (a slight­ly less bogan Valve), and New Orleans (in Allen St, the long-emp­ty for­mer home of Play). Speak­ing of New Orleans, whose old Lambton Quay loca­tion is still emp­ty, it had a great review as a restau­rant by David Bur­ton, but as a bar it’s deeply dis­ap­point­ing. I’d hoped that it would be drip­ping with Saz­er­acs and Ramos Fizz, but the cock­tail list would be more at home in a 1990s provin­cial night­club.

The range of Asian estab­lish­ments is also set to increase, with the old Zila­ta cafe in the Willis St vil­lage ready for con­ver­sion into an Asian restau­rant, near the always-excel­lent Miyabi and the enter­tain­ing­ly insane BBQ/karaoke hole that is Taste of Korea. Karaoke fiends should also be aware that the old MVP/Quarter/Chevy’s is becom­ing a karaoke bar (or “Bar Karaoke” as their sign says), and Club K will re-open just on the oth­er side of the Oaks.

On a sad­der note, one of our for­mer favourites looks to be dead: there have been no signs of life at Superfi­no for a cou­ple of months. There are no For Lease signs either, how­ev­er, so some of us still hang on to vague hopes of enjoy­ing their cosy charms once more. Rather less super is the Auck­land-based chain of cod-Ital­ian restau­rants Portofi­no, and there are strong rumours going around that they’ll be tak­ing over the remain­ing space at the bot­tom of the Merid­i­an build­ing, south of Waga­ma­ma. This fly has nev­er had occa­sion to dine at one of their many out­lets, but let’s just say that reviews such as “None of us will go back to Portofi­no even if it is the last place on earth” do not give us much encour­age­ment.