Hurunui’s best kept carvery secret
A country cafe serving up roast pork on freshly baked bread may have the best kept carvery secret in Canterbury.
Driving through Waikari, an hour north of Christchurch, you could just about blink and miss the little Hurunui township but it is the perfect pitstop for hungry travellers.
Among the options catering to the needs of locals, farmers and Sunday drivers is the eyecatching Waikari Kitchen Cafe with its rustic kerbside appeal of wood and black corrugated iron.
Inside, the smell of a carvery lunch wafts through from 10.30am, Tuesday to Sunday.
If punters time it right, a big carved pork joint is the first thing they see when they walk in the door, where owner and chef Dean Sanders greets customers to serve up the meat on a ‘‘beautiful soft brioche bun, hand-made, fresh out of the oven’’.
And to beef up the meal, salad, coleslaw and the traditional apple sauce are added.
Sanders said it was good to be face-to-face with customers having ‘‘a bit of a chit-chat’’.
‘‘We do things differently here,’’ he said, aiming to have a point of difference from other cafes, including the cabinet food and menu.
Sanders uses his more than 35 years of cheffing experience to serve up food that has customers returning for more.
He said he had run hotels and restaurants all over the world and catered to private yachts in the Caribbean, Scottish castles and Italian resorts, but the country life was where he felt right at home.
He had noticed the ‘‘very underdeveloped’’ premises three years ago while commuting between his home in Cust and his job as a chef at Hawarden’s bistro, The Hogget.
‘‘I saw the potential that wasn’t being utilised.’’
He wanted the decor to reflect ‘‘the big rural workforce, the farms and the stations’’ of the area.
Waikari, which is home to many farmers, also hosts a pub, a garage, two cafes and a convenience store, prompting Sanders to liken it to a ‘‘thriving village’’ on SH1.
Locals used the cafe for their ‘‘five-minute catchups’’, he said. ‘‘It is their place, their hang-out.’’
And it was the locals who kept the business afloat during Covid, with Sanders having opened the cafe months before the pandemic began. ‘‘The locals loved us and kept us going.’’
But in the past six months, tourists had helped the cafe really take off, he said.
‘‘We feed a lot of the tourist trade to Hanmer as well.
‘‘When Hanmer starts getting busy . . . we do well.’’