The clocks go back — and the locals step forward. That's Heretaunga Street West as April says goodbye to the long coastal light shows over the Kawekas. The summer visitors have gone home on their cruise ships and jets, and the people who live West on the East Coast come back to the strip like they never left. This is the season WestSide was built for.
HB Roast comes into its own in autumn. The meat and three vege, sans the long cook times. The tradies know — they've been coming back for reorders before you placed your first delivery on UberEats.
Viet Thai and Thai Orchid. Sister countries. Two very different kitchens. When the weather turns, they have a bowl of something that heats you from the inside out — pho at one end of the week, Thai at the other. WestSide has always had this covered. Asian Noodle House makes it a triptych of Asian food actually served by Asian people and made by Asian cooks. Something not always promised at restaurants with more questionable cuisine provenance.
Knit World has been here longer than most businesses on the strip, and autumn is wrap-up-warm season — so the grannies and granny wannabes get busy. Radically natural: you buy the woolly ingredients (wool, needles, patterns) and then make the warmth in the style and vibe of your very own choosing. The regulars arrive in April like clockwork. They know what they're making before they walk in.
Not glamorous. Essential. If another cyclone is due our way, they have the biggest stock of batteries at prices that make supermarkets stupor. Get those extra storage bins, the draught stoppers, the batteries for the remote and the hooks for the coats that are coming back out of the wardrobe. The things you didn't know you needed until you needed them at 6pm on a Wednesday. Dollar Warehouse solves those problems, frens.
"The things you didn't know you needed until you needed them at 6pm on a Wednesday."
The most honest name on the strip. In te reo Māori, to hoko is to trade — to buy and to sell, simultaneously, in one word. That's the whole model. Autumn has always been a trading season: the instinct to clear out, exchange, move things along before winter settles in. HokoHoko gets that. The shop has the energy of a market and the soul of a community. They hire our rangatahi — give them a chance to chat with the general WestSide public, gain confidence, and if you let them, do a little upsell.
Three jewellers in the 200 block, sitting like quiet professionals. Grieves, Pascoes, Michael Hill — each with a different customer, each with the same understanding of autumn. Engagement season — not because anyone planned it that way, but because after the noise of summer dies down, people start thinking about who they're going to spend the winter with. And longer. A stone in a ring. A chain for someone's birthday. Something that will outlast the season by decades. The customers who come in October spent September walking past the window deciding.
The wardrobe reset is real. The summer t-shirts go in a bag, the merino comes out, and Hallensteins fills the gap efficiently at a price that doesn't require a conversation about it afterwards. There's no shame in the practical purchase. The strip has room for both the independent and the reliable.
Woolworths. One of the newest supermarkets in Hawke's Bay without being one of the most expensive (I'm looking at you, New World East). Doesn't matter what season it is — but in autumn it takes on a different quality. The basket is heavier. The slow cooker ingredients make an appearance. Over 10,000 people visit WestSide weekly to get their shop done.
Never gets written about. Should. Those guys will gladly swap a "We missed you" card for the latest Temu parcel you ordered at 11pm on a Saturday after winesies. Every small business shipping something they made ends up at NZ Post at 100 West. In autumn, when online orders ramp up and people start thinking about gifts and winter comfort purchases arriving in boxes, the counter at NZ Post becomes destination inbound. The people behind it know the business regulars by name — and we love them being there.
Kippers. The one that surprises people. Four decades-plus of fish 'n' chips at the edge of 400 West. Walk the 400 block with a different pace than you walked it in January and you'll find things you didn't see before.
"The visitors were welcome. The locals never left."