The Craft & Co.

Suddenly, it's not enough to enjoy craft beer, locally-made sourdough and bespoke flavoured oils anymore — now it's all the rage to actually make them yourself too. How do you do that, you ask? Enter The Craft & Co. on Smith Street. They can help you out.

The Craft & Co. vision is to teach through demonstration. They're a retail and hospitality space that hosts in-store demonstrations and workshops to help you understand how your food is made — and maybe even give it a crack yourself. It's big space that incorporates an onsite micro-brewery and distillery, cured meat and cheese making rooms and coffee roastery, as well as a retail store, bar and eatery. And they're also hoping to develop their own farm and vineyard. Talk about ambitious. The plan is to hold workshops, demonstrations and events — so if you ever wanted to try your hand at making your own mozzarella, curing your own salami or whipping up some home-brew, this is your place.

And if you simply can't be bothered with DIY, you can just always just EIY (eat it yourself). The lunch and dinner menu is stellar and — best of all — won't break the bank, which is a necessary consideration in this post-Christmas world we now live in. The menu is a mixture of tapas-style nibbles and meaty, filling mains, but the breakfast menu really has us intrigued. A zucchini and mint omelette, wagyu minute steak and chips (for breakfast?!) and the cacao pops — activated buckwheat, cacao and coconut served with milk — are just experimental enough that we'll happily concede to The Craft & Co.'s expertise in this department.