There is a Lebanese pastry on the savoury menu of a Brazilian patisserie in central Christchurch, and it is not there by accident. Stuffed Sfiha is $10 at our counter inside The Welder, and it is one of the most Brazilian things we make, despite the name.
How a Levantine pastry became Brazilian
Sfiha travelled to Brazil with Lebanese and Syrian families who settled there over generations. It did not stay a foreign dish for long. It was absorbed, adjusted and sold on street corners until it became an ordinary Brazilian snack, the sort of thing bought without a second thought on the way somewhere else. Ask a Brazilian about sfiha and you will get an answer about their own childhood, not about the Middle East.
That kind of quiet borrowing is the whole reason Dhi Ferrari's food is worth explaining to visitors. He trained at French and Italian culinary schools and grew up in Rio de Janeiro, and Brazilian cooking is itself a record of everyone who arrived and stayed. A filled pastry with an Arabic name, made in a Christchurch kitchen by a chef from Rio, is a straightforward example rather than a curiosity.
What it sits beside
The sfiha is part of a small, made-in-house savoury range rather than a one-off. Alongside it at the same price are a cheese and spring onion potato bread, a sausage scroll, a creamy chicken bread and a ham and cheese bread. Our three quiches, the Lorraine, the mushroom and the caramelised onion, sit beside them. The Croque Monsieur is made to order.
The one to order next to the sfiha is the Brazilian cheese scone, better known as pao de queijo. It is built on cassava rather than wheat, served warm with hand-whipped butter and guava jam. Guava turns up again in the Romeo and Juliet cheesecake, named for the Brazilian pairing of salty cheese and sweet guava paste, where the cheese is Romeo and the guava is Juliet.
Come with someone and order across the board
A single savoury item is lunch. Four between two or three people is a savoury tasting, and it costs about the same as two mains elsewhere in town. Take a sfiha, a cheese scone, a quiche and a potato bread, put them in the middle of the table, and cut everything in half. Our tables move and seat groups of four to eight, the kitchen is open-plan so you can watch the work happening, and the space is dog friendly with a water bowl and tables with metal legs for clipping a lead to. Our piece on why we chose The Welder covers parking and the rest of the building.
It is the visit that makes the point, not the pastry on its own. Bringing a visitor here gives them something to describe afterwards, which is what our kitchen is aiming at.
Quiches, cassava and the honest caveat
All three quiches and the cheese scone are made with no added gluten, and they sit in our No Added Gluten Cakes and Desserts collection with the sweet items. Two things to be clear about. New Zealand labelling rules mean we can only state that we have not added gluten-containing ingredients, not make a claim about the finished item. And our kitchen is small and without exclusive production areas for all of our different recipes, so traces may occur and nothing we make is guaranteed safe for severe coeliac disease. The sfiha itself is not part of that group.
Ordering and visiting
Savouries are counter items. Walk in and take what is there, allowing around ten minutes for anything made to order. If you want a set quantity held for you, or you are feeding a group, order online instead on the standard two-day lead time; the checkout date picker only offers dates the kitchen can meet. Savouries can also be supplied frozen for heating at your own venue, which is worth knowing if you are catering something yourself. The full menu lists everything currently running.
Collection only, from our patisserie inside The Welder at 20-26 Welles Street, Christchurch Central, one block south of the Bus Interchange. We are open 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Friday and 10am to 3pm Saturday. Finish with a pudim and a coffee.
