Beauty and the feast

A passion for our natural heritage, an imaginative artistic vision, and some determined scrounge-hounding has resulted in the destination café that is Eutopia, in Northland’s Kaiwaka. Theresa Sjöquist tries the coffee and finds out what’s behind the scenes. 

First opened in 2001, Eutopia Café had fallen into disrepair when Marijke Valkenburg and her husband Robert ter Veer bought it in 2014. They imagined eighteen months of solid slog should do the trick to upgrade the funky coffeehouse, but it was five years before they opened in April 2019. Now Eutopia serves breakfast, lunch and coffees, with as much organic food as possible, in an environment that sparks the imagination and draws in ever more curious visitors and day-trippers.  

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