NO NEW TRICKS
It’s early on a mid-January Monday morning, and things are pretty quiet on Rotorua’s Arawa Street. The summer-holiday visitors are gone, there are no tour buses pulling up at the information centre, the District Court isn’t in session. But over the road from the courthouse, the doors are open at the Fat Dog cafe — as they have been almost every day since the mid-1990s. It’s most noticeable from over the road, with its bright blue, yellow and green facade, topped with the cafe’s namesake, blue star on its round orange belly.
New Zealanders were quick to adopt European-style cafe culture in the 90s (legend even suggests local coffee-makers invented that flat white, although Australia would also like
