Cafe Can Can

You can't get more French than this cafe in Newtown. It is tucked away at the end of a nondescript arcade but when you sit and taste its patisseries you know you have crossed the Rubicon, you are in France, and possibly Paris, where this chef used to work, and wait...at the fabled Hotel Crillon. 

Just to drop names for a moment, my only visit to that esteemed hotel was in1972. It was for afternoon tea with a certain personality. I was on my way to London and had been living the past eight months or so in Spain, Cataluna to be precise, in the native village of Salvador Dali, Cadaques. 

Actually Dali and wife Gala, were my neighbours, and we, my partner and I, sometimes visited The Egg,  for Sunday High Tea. They were only one kilometre away at Port Lligat.

 I know most of you won't believe me, but it's true, and the Hotel Crillon, Place Vendome, was, as many know, Dali's favourite crash-pad in Paris, and having tea in the foyer was one way he entertained his myriad of friends /acquaintances, of whom, at one stage in my peripatetic life, I apparently was one. So my patisserie at the Crillon, forty years later, is now echoed in Newtown, Wellington New Zealand!

Anyway, back to Cafe Can Can, I was to meet E my old hostess from my first Wellington visit, for lunch, but, typical, she reneged at the last minute citing work she had forgotten. C'est la vie, mais peu importe, I was there to have a French experience, see photos. A roulet of venison, followed by a brioche of raspberries and pistacchio nuts. And a great coffee. 

Such is lunch in lower Newtown on a Thursday afternoon. Now on to a Kiwi movie at the Brooklyn on the Hill More later...