CafeChat: Quake-hit cafe reopens

Last updated 12:27 10/06/2011

 

Little ripper

Samo Coffee Lounge has been offered temporary accommodation by The Loons in Lyttelton while its own repairs are completed. Samo means same thing, different day, and the cafe takes the name from the graffiti name of artist Jean Michel Basquiat. It is using the same Lyttelton Coffee Company beans which are now being roasted in a garage around the corner. The hiss of the espresso machine can be heard every day of the week - 7.30am to 3pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 3pm weekends. Find it at 16 Canterbury St.

Coming up the ranks

The Wanaka area is better known for its wine than its food but it is increasingly getting attention for the latter. Wanaka- based Pure New Zealand Ice Cream went home from the NZ Ice Cream Awards with the prize for best overall creative icecream for its Kaffir Lime and Ginger creation. The company also earned three gold and three silver medals for its icecreams made in the traditional way with just egg yolk, milk and cream. Also, the town's vodka company, Broken Shed, earned a silver medal at the World Spirits Competition just a year after it was founded. Add that to the success of Wanaka's Mediterranean Wholesale Market which was named supreme award winner at the Great NZ Sausage event for its pork and fennel sausages by master butcher Simon Tiefenbach and you have a veritable culinary destination.

Drink to their success?

Waipara winery Pegasus Bay has achieved its goal of reaching $25,000 for the Red Cross Canterbury Earthquake Appeal. The winery gave $1 from every bottle of Pegasus Bay and Main Divide wine sold and is delighted to have hit its target. General manager Paul Donaldson said that given the company's long association with Christchurch, it felt compelled to give something back to the community following February 22. "We really wanted to try and put something back into a community that we not only had lived in our whole lives, but who had so fanatically supported our business for 25 years," he said. "We were blown away by the results of the fundraising effort, not only locally, but even several international distributors contributed."

Taste of the markets

Diary this all supporters and sellers of goods at farmers' markets.

From July 3-5 the Farmers' Market NZ Forum comes to Canterbury brimful of energy, ideas, workshops and activities. The venue is Waipara Riverside Park in Amberley. The cost, $200 covers workshops, accommodation and meals (excluding the awards dinner). The venue will be open from 11am on July 3.

The NZ Farmers' Market Awards 2011 will be presented at The Taste Farmers' Markets Awards Dinner, Muddy Water Winery, 6pm on Sunday July 3. Tickets $45pp.

For further information on workshops, booking and payment details for the forum and/or the awards dinner go to tastefarmersmarkets.org.nz

Winning wines

A winery from New Zealand's newest wine region has made a mark for itself at one of the world's most important wine shows. Pasquale, from the Waitaki Valley, earned both silver and bronze medals for its 2010 Rieslings at the International Wine Challenge in London. Pasquale is a family- owned vineyard south-east of Mt Cook and was a first-time entrant in the awards. Proprietor Antonio Pasquale was predictably pleased with the result.

"Like all our wines, the dry and off-dry rieslings are made to enhance food, the way wine should be used. They are all generally crisp, moreish and mouth-watering. These honours put our riesling from the Waitaki Valley up among the world's best," he said.

He credits the region's limestone soils, long, hot autumn afternoons and cooler nights for giving the wine an attractive minerality.

- The Press