Enjoy tasting the traditional flavours of Holland right here in your own backyard, without having to swallow that overseas airfare or find your passport.
Zenders Café and purpose-built Event Venue is nestled on Ruakura Road in Newstead only 15 minutes from Cambridge. Three sisters of Dutch descent started up this popular eatery to acknowledge the legacy of Dutch immigrants who made New Zealand their home after WWII. They arrived by the boatload, easily assimilating into their new country and became knows as the ‘invisible immigrants.’ Today many Waikato farmers and other local Kiwi’s can trace their heritage back to Dutch Ancestry.
On the day we visited Zenders, the Café was packed with lunchtime customers enjoying the range of tasty meals. Frikadellen Special took our fancy, with its deep fried crunchy crumbed exterior surrounding a delicious creamy beef or vegetarian choice. A range of delectable cakes and slices with chocolate, custard or apple were impossible to resist. We each had the mouth-watering Dutch Apple cake enhanced by its cinnamon flavour and sweet butter pastry.
The warm, comfortable Euro-Style atmosphere with beautiful Dutch tapestry and furnishings provides a welcome relief from the winter chill outside.
The red brick building houses several venue rooms for business conferences, weddings, family gatherings and promotional or corporate events. The original blueprints from the family’s great-grandfather’s farmhouse were replicated in the construction of this iconic building. The name Zender originates from Zevenaar, the nickname for the town in the Netherlands where the Reymer sister’s father hails from.
Lisa was born in Auckland at the start of the 1970s, living in a small campsite community on the North Shore called Browns Bay. She spent a significant part of her life with her grandparents, often hanging out at the beaches. Lisa has many happy memories from those days at Browns Bay beach, where fish were plentiful on the point and the ocean was rich in seaweed. She played in the water for hours, going home totally “sun-kissed.” “An adorable time to grow up,” Lisa tells me.
Lisa enjoyed many sports; she was a keen tennis player and netballer, playing in the top teams for her age right up until the family moved to Wellington. Lisa was fifteen years old, which unfortunately marked the end of her sporting career. Local teams were well established in Wellington, and her attention was drawn elsewhere.