Dishery

Most people roll into Arrowtown and let the road guide them around to the right, along the main street with its iconic gold-rush era facades. But, if you take a left instead, you’ll end up at Dishery, a pocket of relaxed fun opposite the verdant Butler’s Green. It’s the kind of place you might swing by for a coffee and end up staying for hours and hours, as the sun gets higher in the sky and the call of a spritz gets ever stronger.

Riverside and with a large and leafy, sunny courtyard, Dishery’s setting does a lot of the heavy lifting. Inside and out, it feels both polished and welcoming, easy to settle into. Pastel pink and rich plum colour many surfaces, from the scallop-edged umbrellas to the salt and pepper grinders.

The menu is built around seasonality, craveability and shareability. Brunch dishes are available all day long, the coffee is deliciously strong (and roasted just up the road at Wolf), and the cocktails on tap have been known to turn a late breakfast into a long lunch with very little resistance. Service is effortlessly professional whilst giving off ‘brunch at your mate’s place,’ if your mate had impeccable taste with a twist and a well-stocked bar.

For locals, Dishery is more than just a good café. It’s a meeting place for a celebratory lunch, a debrief, a reliable coffee stop that turns into something more because you keep saying, “just one more.” Arrowtown has no shortage of beautiful places – and this one brings you back for much more than its pretty face.