Volunteers from the St Margaret’s Presbyterian Church have, for the past 25 years or so, treated Queenstown locals and visitors to a free Friday night meal during the winter.
But this year, the church’s Pasta Cafe’s keeping its doors closed.
Minister Clay Peterson tells Mountain Scene the Ross St church is being renovated, and by the time that work’s complete, the winter season will be over.
For many years, the cafe ran out of St Andrew’s Church, on Stanley St, a stone’s throw from the CBD. At that time people queued in the street to get their Friday night feast.
But numbers dropped about five years ago when the call was made — due to parking and traffic issues in central Queenstown — to relocate to the Frankton church.
There’d also been disruptions during Covid, but the cafe, which also serves as a place for people to connect with others in the community and enables the church to "express kindness and the love we receive from God", still attracted hundreds of diners when it did open.
Peterson says it owes its survival to an increasingly elderly group of about 20 vollies, though volunteer Raewyn Byars says they also owe a lot to a contingent of younger people from Youth With A Mission who’ve supported them.
While there are hopes Pasta Cafe can return next winter, Peterson says the congregation’s now focused on the next church fair, being held on November 2.
