A long black at our counter is 33ml. People expecting a mug look at it twice. That measure is the closest thing on our menu to a cafezinho, the small, strong, sweetened coffee Brazilians drink several times a day. The word is a diminutive, little coffee, and in Brazil it works less as a drink order than as a form of manners. Arrive at a house, a shop or an office and you are offered one before anything else gets discussed.
Small cup, many times a day
The Brazilian habit runs opposite to the New Zealand one. No single large coffee carried away and nursed for an hour. A cafezinho is a few mouthfuls, taken standing, hot enough to sting, and then another one two hours later. Sugar goes in the pot, not at the table. Over in a minute.
What survives is the reason for it. Coffee in Brazil is how you make someone welcome. Dhi Ferrari brought that instinct with him from Rio de Janeiro, and nobody at our counter gets hurried through an order.
The bean, and who roasts it
Our hot coffee starts at $5. Both it and the iced coffee run on the Terra Nova Fair Trade Organic blend from C4 Coffee Co, who roast here in Christchurch and work entirely in fair trade organic. The whole coffee list is short on purpose. One piece of vocabulary worth carrying: a drink ordered dirty has a shot of espresso added to it, the quickest way to turn something sweet into something adult.
Most hot and cold drinks can be made with a dairy-free milk instead, a standing everyday option you never need to arrange in advance. As with everything we make, our kitchen is small and without exclusive production areas for all of our different recipes, so traces may occur and nothing is guaranteed safe for severe coeliac disease.
Coffee you eat with a spoon
The affogato is espresso poured over vanilla bean ice cream, and the fastest way to finish a long lunch. Hot hits cold, the surface caves, and you drink the last of it. The Tiramisu Thickshake is the maximalist version of our tiramisu: a double shot of espresso blended through, mascarpone chantilly, lady fingers, and it sits with three others in the thickshake range. The Tiramisu mini cake comes as a single serving, or a tray of six or twelve. Mocha is one of the ten flavours on a petit four tray, fifteen pieces, seven days' notice.
Coffee as a cake
The Flat White Coffee Cake takes the New Zealand order and rebuilds it as a four-layer gâteau, a gâteau being a sophisticated multi-layered cake. Delicate vanilla sponge, soaked heavily in coffee syrup, so a fork goes through it wet and the coffee arrives before the sweetness does. A milky custard runs between the layers and a light coffee buttercream finishes it. Sizes run 15cm for 12 to 15 people, 20cm for 20 to 25, 25cm for 30 to 35, the same ladder as the rest of the specialty layer cake range. It also sits in our New Zealand classics collection, where a Brazilian chef's reading of local flavours ends up.
Bring the visitor who has seen every café in town
Good place to take someone you are showing around. The patisserie is inside The Welder, an 1880s building on Welles Street, one block south of the Bus Interchange and about seven minutes on foot. Parking across the road and behind the building, bike racks at the side entrance. The space is full of plants. The kitchen is open-plan, so you watch the work while it happens, tables move to seat groups of four to eight, and the room is dog friendly with a water bowl and metal-legged tables for clipping a lead to. Order two different coffees and swap them halfway. If your guest does not drink coffee, a Zealong teapot for one pours tea grown in the Waikato on the only plantation in New Zealand.
Turning up, or ordering ahead
Drinks and cabinet items need no notice. Walk in and order. A Flat White Coffee Cake, like most things we bake, needs two days. Larger desserts need three, petit four trays seven, and the checkout date picker only offers dates the kitchen can meet. Everything is collection only, from our patisserie inside The Welder at 20-26 Welles Street, Christchurch Central. Open 10am to 9pm Tuesday to Saturday. The full range sits on our patisserie page.
