In Ancient Rome, a popina was a lower-class tavern or cookshop, almost a takeaway joint, that fed the working classes, and was often associated – rightly or wrongly – with gambling and prostitution.
In Central Otago, Popina is a new, family-style eatery in Queensbury, on a side road that leads off State Highway 6 between Luggate and Cromwell. It’s owned by Tony Lynch and Brenda Jessup. “It’s casual,” says Lynch. “I don’t know about thieves, bandits and slaves – but it’s that egalitarian thing.”
Lynch and Jessup bought the land several years ago, after their son bought the site next door. Experienced restaurateurs, they owned the Ministry of Food in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington for 30 years, and more recently Missy’s Kitchen in Wānaka. They were walking the boundaries of the property with the developer who asked if they’d like to buy a piece of land out near the road, which he was proposing to zone commercial for hospitality. “And we said no, we don’t,” says Lynch, laughing.
But something in the idea stuck. “Brenda and I knew we had one more in us, and then it slowly metamorphosed into this.” Over the years, they’ve planted an apple-cider orchard, and they’re starting to produce more and more off the land. “We kept saying, we’ve got this land, let’s make it as productive as we can – you couldn’t make it more productive than putting a restaurant on it.”
When it came to the build, they turned to their old friend, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland-based architect – and winner of Best House Aotearoa in last year’s Here Awards – Guy Tarrant to design them a restaurant. “They wanted to grow all sorts of produce in the paddock and then serve it in the restaurant,” he says of his brief. “I sort of feel like restaurant doesn’t describe the aspiration of the place – it is way more relaxed than that.”
There were a few design decisions they all agreed on immediately: the building would use a limited palette of basic materials – concrete and steel portals, and massive macrocarpa beams, paired with rammed earth. Tarrant had admired a few rammed-earth buildings over the years. “There’s something about that material in that landscape – it’s a bit like a desert,” he says. “It’s just really beautiful.”
But it’s not really a rammed-earth building: rather, it has a solid rammed-earth spine which presents to the road. You enter through a door in the middle of the wall, and into a more lightweight space, open to the north and framed with macrocarpa beams. “It’s a kind of lean-to,” says Tarrant. “The wall gave us a solid, south-facing element to lean a bunch of sticks up against.”
The lean-to creates a big, generous roof that covers both the dining area and a deep verandah, separated by a wall of windows and sliding doors that runs on an angle, so the verandah is narrower at the top, and wider at the bottom. Inside, there’s a concrete floor, that beautiful wall, simple raw-steel shelving in the bar, and rich, red, earthy tiles: it feels nicely rustic, without being twee. “They’re really simple ideas,” says Tarrant. “It was one of those jobs where we weren’t trying too hard – we weren’t trying to do this big piece of architecture. There is a pragmatism that is driving these things.”
The building’s finished, and at the time of writing Lynch and Jessup were preparing to open with a menu featuring grilled and smoked protein – salmon, lamb, beef – and lots of fresh sides, much of it sourced from nearby growers. “Fresh herbs, lots of olive oil, lots of lemon,” says Lynch. “A nudge from the Middle East or Mediterranean.”
You might drop in for lunch or you might just come for a beer: Lynch and Jessup expect to see locals and tradies in high-vis rubbing shoulders with wealthy lifestylers and tourists, and that’s sort of the point. “We keep going back to the word simple, and that’s what we kept saying to Guy. That has been the defining idea of the whole thing – don’t embellish, keep it simple.”
Popina
Pukerangi Drive, Queensbury
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