A Pastry That Tastes Like Home

During a recent visit to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand and my childhood home, there were three things on my mind: Family, friends and cheese scones. Reconnecting with the first two was the trip’s purpose. The third is what got me really excited.

In my final years in the city, until a friend intervened out of concerns for my health, I ate the cheese-covered savories most mornings. I’m not the only one. Less sweet than the traditional British scone and more flavorful than the American biscuit, the cheese scone is so essential to the New Zealand diet that it is almost impossible to find a cafe here without a plate of them on the counter.

Asking New Zealanders about them often leads to rapture. Eugene O’Connor, 29, a consultant in Wellington, said he has a “crazy love affair” with the “delicious bite of buttery goodness.” Their absence was among the first differences Aimee Cox, 25, noticed when she moved to the United Kingdom to study at a university. “I’ll be dreaming of cheese scones until I set foot on home soil,” she said.

But not all cheese scones are made equal, as I found out upon moving to Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. The scones there were too dry for my taste, or lacked the burst of flavor that comes from the Wellington version’s use of unhealthy quantities of cheese. So, after returning home, I knocked on the kitchen door at Floriditas early one morning to satisfy my passion for the food.

One of the city’s oldest cafes, Floriditas is famous for its Cheddar and arugula scones, which its baker Holly Sinclair, 40, starts making every day at 6 a.m. After spending much of her career in the United States and Canada, returning home was a shock. “It is a bit of a time warp when you come back here from