BRUNCH
Award-winning coffee roasters lead customers by the nose
Handpicked Coffee Roasters
SET-UP & SITE
An unassuming street frontage in Mount Albert, opposite the local icon Triniti of Silver, houses a wonderful aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Open since November, so still relative newcomers to the suburb — and in fact, to New Zealand — the Korean team behind Handpicked Coffee Roasters are not new to the local coffee scene and proudly display their status as one of the country’s top coffee makers — they won the New Zealand Brewers Cup in 2017 — with a sign on their front window and the trophy on the front counter. The cafe is small but tidy and a mixture of rustic and modern — rusty corrugated iron fronts the counters while the coffee is brewed via a state-of-the-art Moai bar system.
SUSTENANCE & SWILL
The all-day breakfast menu is not extensive
— the focus, after all, is the black gold — but provides all the necessary eggs benedict, burgers, scrambled eggs and creamy mushrooms one could want, along with some tempting meal titles: whispering orange french toast ($19) and the light you up quinoa salad ($18). The former consists of baguette, bacon, vanilla custard, berry coulis and seasonal fruit. My brunch companion, a longtime addict of traditional “big breakfasts”, decided to step out of his comfort zone and was pleasantly surprised with the sweet and savoury combo of his meal. “It really works,” he declared. My quinoa salad (with mesclun, tomato, beetroot puree, cottage cheese and a perfectly poached free-range egg) was similarly tasty. The star of the show of course was the coffee. We ordered a long black (a house blend, we were informed, $4) and a syphon brew of single origin Ethiopia guji coffee ($7). Both were top notch.
As well as the menu options, a small range of sweet and savoury options were available in the counter cabinet and would be great for a “coffee get-together with friends” occasion. The staff were skilled and friendly, happy to explain their processes in brewing and the origins of the beans and shop-ground coffee packets for sale.