The iconic Wellington restaurants and cafés that have closed

Wellington's eating and drinking scene has significantly changed over the past few years, with many high-end eateries and iconic establishments forced to shut their doors.

The shift to working from home during the pandemic has decreased foot traffic in the city, at a time when restaurateurs have been grappling with rising rates and rent.

But another problem has also pushed restaurants and cafés over the edge, according to the Restaurant Association, and that is increased construction work in the central city.

"You would not want to sign a long lease and then suddenly find you have diggers blocking your business for three years," Wellington branch president Mike Egan said.

From construction on earthquake-prone buildings, to fixing the city's ageing water infrastructure, Egan said new eateries were being put off trying their luck in Wellington.

"The dynamic has changed of the markets that we operate," he said.

"We rely on a great site with foot traffic walking past, and if that suddenly disappears for two or three years because of roadworks, then you're going to go out of business."

With all these pressures popping up in the capital's food scene, Stuff takes a look at the popular restaurants and cafés that have waved goodbye to Wellington over the past few years.

Hiakai

Wellington fine dining Māori restaurant Hiakai closed its doors in March, after putting "indigenous cuisine" on the map.

Named as one of Time Magazine's 100 Things to Do in the World, the decision to close also coincided with the landlord of the Mount Cook restaurant deciding to sell.

At the time, chef Monique Fiso and manager Katie Monteith said the "world had changed" since the restaurant had opened its doors in 2018 and so had they.

"The landscape for owning a small business is incredibly tough and running a restaurant of this magnitude is all consuming," they said in a statement.

Bookings at the high-end eatery, which began as a series of pop ups that explored Māori and Pasifika cuisine, were full right up to its closure.

However, when the announcement was made, Hiakai said the business was "evolving", rather than ending.

Field & Green

In November last year, the duo behind Wellington's Field & Green announced they were shutting the doors of their eatery that specialised in "European soul food".

Chef Laura Greenfield and Raechal Ferguson said it had been a "very tough time" in hospitality, and that the lease on the building was ending in the new year.

"This has given us the opportunity to move on to the next chapter in our lives. Field & Green has been the most wonderful home to both of us for over eight years," the pair said in a Facebook post.

Cuisine awarded the restaurant one hat last year, describing the menu as "deftly balancing flavours and textures".

"The lack of opulence that greets you as you step off the busy streets of Wellington into Field & Green belies the richness of the rustic culinary experience that awaits," the magazine said.

Shepherd

A month before Field & Green's announcement, the hip and modern eatery Shepherd shocked the capital by saying it would shut up shop the following month.

The decision to close after seven years was the result of "changing dining habits" and the "rising cost of living", according to its owners Shepherd Elliot and Sean Golding.

"The restaurant world changes continuously. Culinary moods ebb and flow," they said in a Facebook post.

"To remain at the top of one's game and be consistent and excellent requires enormous effort and passion, without these it becomes very difficult to maintain the high standards one strives for," they said.

Shepherd was named best casual dining at the Cuisine Good Food Awards in 2019, which said "casual was now chic" and nowhere was doing it better than the restaurant.

Tulsi

Curry fans in the capital were disappointed when one of the city's best-known Indian restaurants, Tulsi on Cuba Street, closed its doors in 2022 after nearly 23 years.

Owner Monty Patel said he was heartbroken at the decision, brought on by high inner city rents, difficulties finding staff and the price of ingredients going "through the roof".

"Everything's going up, every day, and the city is dead," he told Stuff at the time.

"How do you survive when you have got to pay full salaries for the staff? You can't pass that onto the customer," he said.

Patel started the Cuba Street venue in 1999 after arriving in the country the year before.

He initially worked in his brother's dairy before branching out on his own, starting a superette and then going into the restaurant business.

Milk Crate

Wellington café Milk Crate shut its doors in 2022, after its lease came to an end and the owners could not agree to new terms with the landlord.

The popular Ghuznee Street cafe had served the coffee-drinking community for 16 years, with the owners saying it was "tough to walk away" from everything they had built.

At the time, Morgan Allan-West, one of Milk Crate's owners, said they had been able to manage the impact of COVID, but rising rates and uncertainties meant it was a "logical decision" to close.

Amok

Mount Victoria staple Amok closed in April last year, citing an "incredibly hard summer" that included all the "aches and pains" everyone felt in the small business world.

Owners Tashie Piper and Thom Millott called time on their Mount Victoria venue just three years after it opened, saying they had "tried everything" but they were "exhausted".

"Working way too many hours to open to an almost empty restaurant for months. Every single cost has gone up. We have had to make the choice to say goodbye," Millott said at the time.

However the pair said it was "good bye for now, but not forever".

Elements Cafe

Lower spending and rising costs were blamed for hammering the nail in the coffin of the well-known Lyall Bay eatery Elements at the beginning of the year.

The owner of the long-running café on Onepu Road, Angela Slaughter, said that "passion and effort" were not enough to offset the other challenges in the current economic climate.

Those challenges were "all the obvious ones", including rising labour and supply costs, increases in compliance, insurance, rents, and a decline in customer spend.

The Bresolin

In 2020, The Bresolin was another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic when it decided to close its doors.

The CBD bar and restaurant was one of three owned by brothers Lorenzo and Leonardo Bresolin​, sons of Wellington restaurant legend, Il Casino owner Remiro Bresolin.​

"[The pandemic] has very unfortunately forced our hand into some pretty severe consolidation to try and survive," Lorenzo Bresolin told Stuff at the time.

"We spent 14 years working towards building that project and had a series of small restaurants, and an incredible small group of partners and people that have worked with us, that helped recognise that dream," he said.

- This story was first published on Stuff