A long black at our counter is 33ml, which surprises people who expect a mug. That measure is the closest thing we have on the 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 is less a drink order than a form of manners. Anyone who arrives at a house, a shop or an office is offered one before anything else is discussed.
Small cup, many times a day
The Brazilian habit is the opposite of the New Zealand one. Instead of a single large coffee carried away and drunk over an hour, a cafezinho is a few mouthfuls, taken standing up, and then another one later. It is sweetened in the pot rather than at the table and 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 it is why nobody at our counter is hurried through an order.
The bean, and who roasts it
Our hot coffee starts at $5, and it and the iced coffee both 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 having: a drink ordered dirty simply has a shot of espresso added to it, which is the quickest way to turn something sweet into something adult.
Most of our hot and cold drinks can be made with a dairy-free milk instead, which is a standing everyday option rather than something 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 it is the fastest way to end a long lunch. The Tiramisu Thickshake is the maximalist version of our tiramisu: a double shot of espresso blended through, with mascarpone chantilly and lady fingers, and it sits alongside three others in the thickshake range. The Tiramisu mini cake is a single serving on its own, or a tray of six or twelve, and Mocha is one of the ten flavours on a petit four tray, fifteen pieces with 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 — on a delicate vanilla sponge, generously soaked, carrying the smooth, creamy profile of the drink itself. It is 15cm for 12 to 15 people, 20cm for 20 to 25 and 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, which is where a Brazilian chef's reading of local flavours ends up.
Bring the visitor who has seen every café in town
This is a 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, with parking across the road and behind the building and bike racks at the side entrance. The space is full of plants, the kitchen is open-plan so you can watch the work as it happens, tables move to seat groups of four to eight, and it is dog friendly with a water bowl and metal-legged tables for clipping a lead to. Order two different coffees and swap 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.
Ordering and visiting
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 and petit four trays need 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, and we are open 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Friday and 10am to 3pm Saturday. The full range is on our patisserie page.
