Visitors who come down for Cup and Show Week tend to arrive with a race card, a good jacket and no plan for the Saturday afternoon, so if you're the one hosting and you've been asked for things to do in Christchurch this weekend, bring them inside The Welder, the 1880s building on Welles Street, where the espresso machine hisses behind the plants and you can watch a palette knife drag ganache across the bench in our open kitchen.
A table built for the whole visiting party
Cup Day at Addington falls on Tuesday 10 November and Show Day on Friday 13 November, so most visitors stay on through the Saturday, and that's the day to bring everyone in. Our tables move and push together for groups of four to eight, there's parking across the road and behind the building, and the bus Interchange is about seven minutes' walk away. If someone brings the dog, we keep a water bowl out and tables with metal legs for clipping a lead to, and we have high chairs beside two low tables for anyone in the party who needs one.
The booked version: an afternoon of tea and petit fours
If you'd like the afternoon settled before anyone lands, book our Christchurch high tea, a 90-minute sitting at $65 a head with bottomless organic Zealong tea, a savoury course led by our Brazilian cheese bread, and then desserts and petit fours made from scratch with real chocolate and seasonal flavours. Weekends book out quickly, so reserve a Saturday at least a week ahead through the High Tea Experience booking page, where you can book up to ten guests and choose the vegetarian menu or the no-added-gluten version. Our kitchen is small and without exclusive production areas for all of our different recipes, so traces may occur, and we can't guarantee anything is safe for severe coeliac disease.
The walk-in version: slices, a cheese scone and something cold
If nobody wants to commit to a time, walk in and let everyone point at the cabinet. Cake slices run from $9 for the Brazilian Carrot to $12 for layer cakes like the Thunder Chocolate slice, its brigadeiro filling holding a clean line between four layers of sponge until the fork goes through, and a table of four sharing four flavours gets through most of the cabinet. The Brazilian cheese scone comes out warm, golden at the crust and chewy at the centre from the tapioca, with hand-whipped butter and guava jam for the salty-and-sweet pairing Brazilians eat it with, and it's made with no added gluten, with the same shared-kitchen caveat as above. Whoever skipped lunch should take the Dark Chocolate Thickshake, thick and frosty enough to be closer to pudding than a drink, and the story of the cheese bread is in our pão de queijo post.
Saturday night, with the kitchen still going
We stay open until 9pm on Saturdays, so the visit can stretch past dinner, and the warm plates are where the evening goes. The Matilda Chocolate ($20) has hot chocolate sauce poured over warm dark chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream, melting the ice cream into the cake as you go, while the Chocolate Lava Cake ($20) only runs at the centre for a few minutes after it leaves the kitchen. The S'more Cookie ($18) sets house-made marshmallow and cold ice cream over a warm double chocolate cookie, and most tables end up passing it round. How those evenings run is on our page for late night desserts in Christchurch, and the scheduled Patisserie After Dark menu is a separate night, covered in our date night dessert ideas.
A travel cake for the drive home
Since we close every Sunday and Monday, visitors heading home on the Sunday should collect on Saturday, and the thing to send them off with is one of our Tea Cakes & Loaves, the travel cakes we make to ride in a car boot with no delicate frosting and no need for a fridge. Each comes as a 20cm loaf for $35, serving 8, or a 25cm bundt for $55, serving 16. The Brazilian Carrot Cake carries a chocolate brigadeiro drizzle that sets soft and fudgy over the golden crumb, and can be ordered with no added dairy at checkout (shared-kitchen caveat applies), while the Cuca Banana Cake sits on a buttery streusel base that clicks under the knife and the Anthill Coconut Cake slices cleanly to show the chocolate speckles that give Bolo Formigueiro its name. Our guide to bundt cakes built to be carried covers the rest, and if the weekend holds a celebration, our layer cakes start at $95 for a 15cm serving 12 to 15, with more on our page for birthday cakes in Christchurch.
Before your visitors land
Most cakes need two days' notice, and the date picker at checkout only offers days our kitchen can meet for what's in your cart, so choose the Saturday and collect at the pickup time you select. We're open 10am to 9pm Tuesday to Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday. On Show Day, a public holiday in Canterbury, we close at 3pm. If you'd like your guests to leave with a reason to come back, a gift card from $15 slides into the bag beside the cake box as it's handed across the counter.
