A torrent of newly opened bars and restaurants are bringing life back to central Christchurch. WILL HARVIE finds some owners struggling, some nervous and some confident.

When I ordered the pickled pigs ear, winebar owner Liz Phelan let go an exasperated giggle.



It's the "most extreme thing" on the menu at Shop Eight, her New Regent St, Christchurch venue, she says.



And it was fairly out there: Thin strips of slightly goopy and vinegary meat -- but maybe not quite meat. Hmmm. But the 2007 pinot noir was nice.



Phelan and her latest chef, Mike Smith, relaunched Shop Eight in August as "exceptional food in a winebar setting". The wine list is all New Zealand and mostly organic. The menu is all preserved in some manner -- pickled, smoked, cured, salted, jellied. The "ancient techniques", she says. There's smoked salmon, pickled herring, chicken liver pate, spiced mushrooms, kim chi, nuts and cheeses. They're served cold on small plates or platters made for sharing. All surpassed the pig ear.



It's a bold menu for Phelan, who has struggled in the hospitality trade since opening on New Regent St in April 2013 as an espresso slinger. She then ditched the coffee for a much-lauded, five-night-a-week partnership with chef Alex Davies. "His food got a lot of attention, but the business was not thriving," she says. "Alex and I decided to go our separate ways" and she contemplated exiting the street as well.



In the end she relaunched as a seven-day operation and is hoping a good summer will pay her debts and set-up a sustainable business.



Shop Eight's reinvigoration comes as a host of new hospitality venues open in central Christchurch. Great Coffee Fast just opened on Manchester St alongside the reincarnated Stock XchangeMade Espresso Bar just opened in the new Warren and Mahoney building at Montreal and Cashel Sts, Dux Central comprises four separate bars on Lichfield St, and Pot Sticker Dumpling Bar will open in the same complex later this year. Phillip Kraal has shifted Bamboozle from Sumner to the Deloitte building on Cambridge Tce and added Johnny Sausage, a bagel and pizzeria joint, in a separate space steps away.



The hard-nosed businessmen behind Baretta on St Asaph St recently opened The Cuban a little eastward on St Asaph, and later this year will open Empire, a Japanese yakitori (skewers) restaurant and bar next door to Baretta. Meanwhile, the family behind Pomeroy's Old Brewery Inn will open Little Pom's as a breakfast-brunch-lunch cafe within days.



On New Regent St, whisky bar The Last Word is expanding into a neighbouring unit, Twenty Seven Steps has opened with a "rustic European" menu and Casa Publica, by Carlton owner James Murdoch, has opened in the former Flying Burrito Brothers building. Phew, and this list is hardly exhaustive.

So there's lots of action and it almost seems like a golden age of hospo openings in Christchurch at the moment. Only it isn't that unusual, says University of Canterbury marketing and management academic Sussie Morrish. She's been tracking the industry since the quakes, and says entrepreneurs traditionally open before Cup Week to catch that trade, then swoop into longer spring nights and then the Christmas rush.

Dean Kozanic Liz Phelan and chef Mike Smith have relaunched Shop Eight on New Regent St as a winebar with a interesting, perhaps challenging, menu.

Obviously the demolitions disrupted those patterns, but her data show Christchurch now has more venues than it did before the quakes. "Hospitality follows population growth," she says simply.

The sentiment is echoed by Neat Places editor Marcia Butterfield. She founded the website and smartphone app at the end of 2010 to cover Christchurch hospitality venues as well as shopping, fashion, arts, cultural and other neat places, She's since expanded coverage to Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. So she's got the national picture and notes nine bars and eateries will open in Dunedin before the end of the year. "I don't feel like Christchurch is unique," she says.

What is unique about Christchurch, she says, is "people pay more attention to (hospo openings) because of what they went through". Cantabrians love that pre-quake venues come back to life, perhaps in different places and with different themes and menus. Or that pre-quake operators have completely shifted gear, but come back in force.

Will Harvie Simon Scarlett, left, and Jeremy Ferguson opened The Cuban restaurant and bar on St Asaph St recently. It serves Cuban street food and cigars.

Read more:

* Post-quake Christchurch restaurant scene funky and forward-looking, says trade association chief

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A good example is the trio behind Baretta.Pre-quakes, Gregor Ferguson was in the food and alcohol sector in Sol Square. Post-quakes, Ferguson, son Jeremy, and Simon Scarlett opened Baretta as a flash Italian restaurant and late-night bar in mid 2013. Almost immediately they had to fight Christchurch City Council's proposed Local Alcohol Policy (Lap), which designated their area for 1am closings.

If that went through, Gregor Ferguson promised, they wouldn't open more bars in Christchurch. Well, it didn't go through. St Asaph and most of the CBD can close at 3am under a revised LAP.

Will Harvie Ava Wilson will launch Little Pom's Cafe on Kilmore St this week. It's a breakfast-brunch-lunch affair.

True to their word, the trio recently opened The Cuban, which features South American and Cuban street food and cigars. Problem is, they can't advertise cigars. They contain tobacco, which causes cancer and kills people. So there are no cigar signs, no cigar menus, just a small humidor behind the bar and customers have to ask what's available.

On Tuesday -- pig-ear night -- business was fairly slow and nobody was herfing stogies. The place sells nine different cigars for between $9 and $59 each. Among them are Montecristo and Romeo y Julieta, both well known brands with communist versions from Cuba and capitalist versions from other countries nearby (see Cuban revolution).

The Cuban theme is picked up in the decor, which includes a ceiling ventilation tube that's been cleverly fashioned into a Soviet missile (see 1962 crisis) and perhaps unintentionally a front wall of steel that could be a prison wall if a little higher (see Cuban oppression). There are nods to Hemingway and Castro, of course.

Over on Kilmore St, the Pomeroy family have adopted the old trick of extending a brand. They've got the Pomeroy pub, the Pomeroy brewery, the Pomeroy B&B and now Little Pom's cafe, all side by side. "We've been in the hospitality business for years and we think we know what works," says daughter Ava Wilson a little nervously. As manager, she serving up "traditional meals with a twist". Think eggs benedict with a chipotle hollandaise sauce. The decor is notable for bold wallpapers.

Back at Shop Eight, Liz Phelan is sticking to her guns. Her business is all about sustainability, resourcefulness, environmentalism, and localism. All of the food is organic and almost all sourced from within Canterbury, or at least New Zealand. It's obviously not vegetarian.

"I don't know if there's a market for it in Christchurch," she says. "What creates buzz in Christchurch is people with reputations doing new things."

"If I can't make it work this summer, and if it's not financially rewarding, then I'll find a buyer or something," she says a little grimly.