Mondo Cafe

Rating: 2

We ate lunch here in February 2026.

Cheese & onion pasty
Lamb curry pie
Lemon cream cheese muffin

Mondo can be found in the Hastings New World, and is staffed by New World employees in New World uniforms. The care taken with the food reflects this - they’ve done an okay job, but it’s not their main priority. The pastry on the pie was whack - undercooked in some areas, cracked, and severely burned in one corner. We were pleased with the quality of the lamb at least. The pasty was a surprise. Pasties we’ve experienced have been mince based, so we were expecting mince with cheese and onion. But no, there was no mince, instead there was a cheese onion filling kind of like what you’d get in a cheese roll in Southland. Once we had processed the shock we enjoyed it, although the pastry was a bit soggy.

We were offered heating and butter for the lemon cream cheese muffin, so we took the cashier up on her offer. After all, surely she knows her product. Nope. The cream cheese melted, while the butter was more miss than hit. In her defence, this cashier probably mostly works the deli but got pulled into Mondo when Janine called in sick. Bloody Janine, she’s always sick. Faker.