New­town may or may not be a bit shit, but their right-on cof­fee com­pa­ny Peo­ple’s Cof­fee (sor­ry, I could­n’t resist adding the apos­tro­phe) cer­tain­ly know their shit. Their pres­ence in cen­tral Welling­ton is expand­ing, and two recent­ly-opened cafés proud­ly stock the Peo­ple’s brand: Meow and Mon Ami.

Meow, seen from its TV

Meow has tak­en over the space of the for­mer (and much lament­ed) Roti, next to Quoil in Willis St. The decor’s only had a mild makeover, but the retro kitschy kiwiana theme is pret­ty con­sis­tent, with the usu­al Tretchikoffesque prints, orange lamp­shades and ’70s TV aug­ment­ed by some nice chunky crock­ery. I haven’t eat­en there yet, but the brunch menu includ­ed some inter­est­ing vari­a­tions on the stan­dards, such as pinenut & saf­fron scram­bled eggs, cashew & cran­ber­ry ros­ti with halou­mi and rock­et, and all sorts of things with “wild” bacon.

In Bond St, a French café called Mon Ami has also recent­ly opened. It’s inter­est­ing that while many French places in down­town Welling­ton empha­sise the styl­ish urban theme (e.g. Sim­ply Paris, Le Met­ro­pol­i­tain), Mon Ami is full of out­doorsy mag­a­zines, and their web­site goes on about “tramp­ing, sail­ing, kayak­ing, bik­ing, paragly­d­ing”. The decor man­ages to look both rus­tic and ster­ile at the same time, but even if that’s not your thing, dish­es such as rab­bit ter­rine and roque­fort & sul­tana loaf (at rea­son­able lunchtime prices) should be enough to tempt you in.