By Roger Childs

We use fresh, seasonal produce to cook you delicious, hearty classics. We have a wide selection of dishes such as pizza, pasta, salads, steak & fries, schnitzel and more. Our food can be vegan friendly – even the pizza! –Arcimboldi Cafe

Great artist.  Wonderful café

Over the last six weeks we’ve visited a friend in Seatoun three times and on each occasion patronized the superb Arcimboldi Café which has muffins to die for. Like many excellent eating places in the Greater Wellington area such as Relish in Waikanae and Rosetta in Raumati, the Dundas Street café is located in an old house/shop and has three places where you can dine:

  • the front section is accessed by a side door. One vacates the premises via the front
  • a back indoor section which has plenty of seating 
  • an outdoor area behind the building with a sheltered garden which is often warm enough to sit outside in winter.

The café has plenty of tasty food on the menu, but the highlight is at least six types of fresh muffins, most with interesting fruit combinations. The coffee and other drinks are excellent.

Around the walls are examples of the extraordinarily expressive ‘food portraits’ by the Renaissance painter who gives the café its name.

Prints of the Renaissance master

Arcimboldi was recognized as an ingenious talent in his age, but he is much more famous in our’s.  –Art Critic, Jonathan Jones

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, possibly also known as Arcimboldi, was from Milan in northern Italy and lived from 1527 to 1593. Characterized as a “Mannerist”— a term used for painters who reacted against the harmony and alleged perfection of the High Renaissance masters by experimenting with varied proportions and often bizarre subject matter.

Arcimboldo could be seen as the 16th century precursor to Surrealist René Magritte as his revolt against perfection and representational art used different plants and food as well as flowers, fish, shells and even books to create his pleasantly arcane portraiture.

Prints of the master decorate the walls and on one surface the café has its own version of an Arcimboldo picture.

The magic of Seatoun

This is a part of Wellington best known for being the location of the tragic 10 April 1968 Wahine Disaster where the inter-island ferry sank in Cyclone Giselle close to the beach. A Memorial Park remembers the disaster and the 53 lives it claimed. 

But Seatoun is so much more. Facing north-east, it is sheltered from prevailing northerlies and southerlies with a micro-climate which in pre-colonial times allowed early Polynesian settlers to grow kumara that generally favour the sub-tropical weather of regions further north.

Linked to the rest of the Eastern Suburbs by a short early 20th century tunnel, Seatoun has distinctive character. It is just over the hill from Breaker Bay to the south, linked by the Pass of Branda.  Generations of runners and walkers have traversed the Pass in marathons, half marathons, relays and training runs. Once over the steep pinch, the races have taken a direct route north through Seatoun, not far from Arcimboldi Café, before following the coast around the Miramar Peninsula. 

If you are visiting Wellington get out to Seatoun. Head for the airport and turn left at the final roundabout into Broadway which driving east will take you to the tunnel. The wonderful Arcimboldi Café is on the right in Dundas Street which heads off to the right once through the tunnel. You won’t be disappointed.