Pasta Café is back on the menu with lashings of love and hearty helpings
It’s been a highlight of Queenstown’s ski season for 21 years, delighting many a weary, homesick skifield worker longing for Mum’ s hearty home cooking, but Wakatipu Presbyterian Church’s annual free-for-all Pasta Café is just as much a hit with the locals.
Held at St Margaret’s Church in Frankton, the recipe hasn’t changed – lashings of love served up with endless, multiple free helpings loaded with pasta, homemade meat sauce, topped with cheese, veggies and bread. There’s even a vegetarian option and it’s all beautifully topped off with the highlight for many – delicious home-baking. And it’s not just the church Grandmas’ baking, assures Pastor Ian Guy, who’s been whipping up his specialty chocolate chip cookies.
A team of some 25 church volunteers range in age from 20 to 80, including restaurant and hotel chefs, and there’s a wonderful globally united atmosphere, with live entertainment, as well as crafts and games for the kids.
More and more local families have been coming to Pasta Café in recent years to enjoy not only the free meal, but the loving atmosphere and community, says Ian.
“This isn’t just a free meal. We have everyone from those roughing it in cars to quite wealthy people. It’s a wonderful chance to connect and meet new people of all ages,” says Ian. “People keep asking for it every year.”
It’s become such a vital connection for the community that the Queenstown Lakes District Council has included Pasta Café in its Winterdaze programme, this year themed around Winter Wellness.
Council Wellbeing Programme Co-ordinator Samantha Saccomanno says while the free Friday night dinners are great, Pasta Café is also all about connection and bringing people together through kai. “It’s an amazing initiative that brings people together from all walks of life,” she says.
“The council and social agencies see us as filling a gap locally,” says Ian.
With the cost of living and groceries rising so high, Ian’s expecting even bigger numbers this year. While in its central Queenstown heyday Pasta Café turned out as many as 500 free meals a night with lengthy queues down Stanley Street, volunteers are expecting to turn out more than 200 meals each night. Each Friday they go through 20kgs of mince and pasta, and copious blocks of cheese.
Kiwi Harvest is a wonderful contributor, bringing in surplus produce. However, this year the pickings are a bit slim, and with an even greater need anticipated amid increased living costs any donations are welcome, says Ian. The church has set up a Pasta Café Givealittle page to help cover any shortfall, but it’s largely all funded from church coffers.
To anyone who sees the event as charity, Ian says: ‘Leave your pride at the door.”
“We feel we’ve been blessed, and we want to share God’s goodness with others,” he says. “It’s our way of paying it forward and expressing our faith through our actions.”
St Margaret’s Church,
cnr Ross and McBride Sts, Frankton
Four Fridays from August 4 | 6 pm – 8 pm
To donate: givealittle.co.nz/org/wpchurch
