Oscar Guerrero reveals the secret garden hiding behind Lyttelton’s Spooky Boogie cafe

For a decade, Oscar Guerrero and his partner, Tessa Brodie, have built Spooky Boogie into a much-loved stop on Lyttelton’s main street. But the cafe’s most surprising feature remains out of sight: a small garden at the back that even some longtime customers have yet to discover. “There’s a secret garden out there,” Guerrero said. The sunlit courtyard sits up a flight of stairs, in a terraced space with seats and views across the surrounding hills towards the sea. He said visitors sometimes come in for years without realising it is there. The cafe itself is easy to miss, too. Guerrero said there is no sign outside announcing it as a coffee shop, so people either know where to look or happen upon it while exploring near the Lyttelton Fire Station. He and Brodie are happy to keep the place a little under the radar. Spooky Boogie began in 2016 as a simple idea: takeaway coffee and art, bringing together the couple’s interests in coffee and records. Guerrero said customers started lingering, so the owners added chairs. Food followed, despite not being part of the original plan; what began as a thought about offering a few biscuits has grown into a more substantial cabinet, including treats from Grizzly Baked Goods. The business also sells vinyl and art, and the couple have roasted their own coffee for eight years, using organic Trade Aid beans. Its name comes from a character in the Japanese anime thriller series Psycho-Pass. Guerrero’s earlier ventures include bar El Santo and the record store Evil Genius. He opened the latter in 2011, but it lasted only five days before the Canterbury earthquakes brought it to an end. The records and art at Spooky Boogie now carry a thread of that earlier passion into the cafe’s evolving identity.