The Matterhorn

Every great restaurant is a public place stuffed with private dreams. In the course of time, the customers take spiritual possession of it. So it is with the Matterhorn, which is closing its Cuba St premises after 54 years.

‘‘Wellington owns the Matterhorn, we’re only the caretakers,’’ said Sam Chapman, a former co-owner of the restaurant. This sense of ownership is especially strong in the capital city, where restaurants die like flies and a longlasting one is a miracle.

The Matterhorn is thought to have hosted jazz genius Louis Armstrong in 1971. It was also the place where in 2002 The Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood had his 21st birthday. An aeon of cultural and social change separates these two public events, and the restaurant marked them both.

A Wellington restaurant is also the haunt of prime ministers, tycoons, governors-general and bureaucrats. In other words, it’s a place for plotting. The Matterhorn is less storied in this area than The Green Parrot, where Winston Peters often lurked, or the defunct Le Normandie, meeting place in 1984 for panicked officials fighting prime minister Robert Muldoon’s refusal to obey the incoming Labour government and devalue the currency.

The Matterhorn waits for its secret history to be told, but in any case this is not the end. The mountain is moving from Cuba St, but the name might survive and thrive somewhere else. Let’s hope so. The Matterhorn has a tradition to maintain.