TAWA5 Best Café

Not to be con­fused with “Best Cof­fee”. This cat­egory is about the sort of place you go for brunch on a Sunday morn­ing. Good cof­fee is import­ant, but so is good food.

Meow

Hid­den away down Edward Street, Meow does great brunches (the ginger­bread pan­cakes are a fave), with a large din­ing area suit­able for groups or space to read the week­end paper. Meow is devel­op­ing into a fine ven­ue for low key gigs from great bands. Also much loved for their approach to glu­ten free food.

Meow Cafe: 9 Edward Street

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Baobab Cafe

This cafe is so New­town it’s almost ridicu­lous. For read­ing mater­i­al you’ll find _Adbusters_ dis­played in flax kete, and on the counter you’ll find CDs for sale in sup­port of the loc­al primary school. Even if that’s not your type of thing, the food prob­ably is. There’s a wide selec­tion of bak­ing, includ­ing glu­ten-free treats, and the pista­chio pan­cakes are to die for, even if they take a mys­ter­i­ously long time to be cooked. The menu changes fre­quently accord­ing to what’s in sea­son, so you might not always be able to get grilled stone fruit or a rhu­barb smooth­ie, but you are guar­an­teed some­thing deli­cious nev­er­the­less.

Baobab Cafe: 152 Rid­di­ford St, New­town

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Sweet Mother’s Kitchen

From early morn­ing break­fast through to late-night noms, Sweet Mother­’s is a ver­sat­ile and pop­u­lar joint. Its soul food/­Tex-Mex inspired menu is a refresh­ing change from reg­u­lar cafe fare, and it’s often the first port of call for out-of-town vis­it­ors. Oh, and one more thing: curly fries.

Sweet Mother­’s Kit­chen: 5 Cour­tenay Place

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Maranui

A huge com­munity effort saved the fire-dam­aged cafe from demoli­tion, and the Lyall Bay com­munity has been rewar­ded with a lovely loc­al cafe. The ser­vice might be slow at peak times, but you can enjoy the spec­tac­u­lar ocean views while you wait.

Maranui Cafe: 7a Lyall Parade, Lyall Bay

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Kiallas

Anoth­er New­town favour­ite, Kial­las’ menu includes both stand­ard Pakeha cafe fare and Greek spe­ci­al­it­ies. We like the pan­cakes with rhu­barb com­pot, the haloumi and the meze plat­ter. And we also dig how they won’t laugh at you if order bacon with your veget­ari­an break­fast. The cof­fee, beans from Peoples, is good and strong.

Kial­las Café: 176 Rid­di­ford St, New­town

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