Pilar opened last month at 2 Ponsonby Road – the Great North Road end.
Our favourite dish so far is the corncakes - but we are also keen to try the vegan dish - Cauliflower tacos!
Please tell us a little about yourself? What inspired you to open your own cafe?
I’m a chef and graduated from an Auckland local culinary school and have been in a commercial kitchen since 2013. I worked for different employers on different sections with different workmates in different cities. But mostly they were cafes. I was thinking I could learn something new from a few years ago. I’m a shy person since I was little, but I would love to take on new challenges. “Life is short" one of my previous workmates said to me. She inspired me.
The cafe looks nice – very contemporary. How did you decide on the concept and the name for Pilar?
My favourite book in childhood is,‘The Old Man and the Sea'. Then we picked Pilar as the name. The idea was from SundayBestNZ who helped me to develop the design. They also provided some ideas for inside, and my husband and I also did some online research for the decorations. Simple is the best. “In 1934, New England’s Wheeler Yachts crafted a 38-foot sport fishing boat for legendary author Ernest Hemingway. He named his new boat ‘Pilar', which was Hemingway’s nickname for his second wife, Pauline, and also the name of the woman leader of the partisan band in his 1940 novel set during the Spanish Civil War, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’. It was on this vessel that the Nobel Prize winner pioneered big-game fishing, hunted Nazi submarines and wrote two of his most famous literary works – ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (1953) and 'Islands in the Stream' (1970).”
What role will social media play in your marketing strategy?
I do think social media is playing an important role nowadays. People attract people.
Please tell us about the food and your menu?
We are providing Rocket coffee beans from Hamilton. Not many places in Auckland do work with Rocket. We wanted to bring a good quality coffee roaster to more people.
We are doing traditional European cafe food, plus Asian fusion choices, still improving and wanting to update chef specials regularly so as to bring more new and creative ideas to customers.
Everything on our menu, we do from scratch – corn fritters, pancakes, poke sauce for poke bowls, chicken marinade for the burger, steak marinade for the open sandwich. We do our best to keep the good quality for every single item on the plate.
We know it’s early days but what has the feedback been so far?
Customers are so kind and sweet, they always say the food and coffee were good. We have a few reviews on google and they are all five stars.
PILAR CAFE, 2 Ponsonby Road, T: 09 217 9890, @pilar.ponsonby
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Published: 31 July 2023