Orto Trading Co., Surry Hills,15/12/12

This was our final Brunch club of the year,also our first for 3 weeks due to one of our members getting the 5 star treatment in Cambodia. So this was our Christmas party if you like, featured a whopping 8 people around a big table intent on making 2012's Brunch Club go out with a bang.

Our guests were on behalf of Sal her flatmate Paul & her sister SJ (one of our fave Brunch club guests) & Mark (for his third brunch appearance of the year). On behalf of Brad; Adrian (come again) and finally on behalf of Andrew his friend from Barcelona Thiago. Curiously Thiago informed us that 'Orto', the name of the cafe, means anus hole in Spanish. Nice!!

Stories of 2012 including  our various overseas adventures this year, my TAFE Christmas party staff awards, Paul's cricket adventures, SJ's cosmetic surgery  were interspersed with phone calls from Mummy bear demanding mangoes.

Our quiz was not the climatic 20 that we were wanting for the end of the year despite 8 people answering. Still some impressive answers from Adrian knowing JRR Tolkein's South African birthplace & that George Bush snr served as the head of the CIAA as well as being the president.

Adios 2012.

The place itself was enjoyable & pleasant but our coffee order got terribly confused which wasn't a good start. Still, food was great so in the Christmas spirit of Jean Valejean rather than Scrooge we won't begrudge them.

ANDREW SAYS: 4 golden eggs to end the year. P.S do you like my Christmas present for my gran namely a Hot Royals Calendar?

The Gardener's Lodge Cafe, Victoria Park

This was one of those lovely sunny summer mornings that we have very gradually started to have. I stayed with Vice Toff the night before at Wesley College (don't tell the SMH) & my stay coincided with the residents end of year party which consisted of blasting the classics (ACDC, Cold Chisel, Eye of the tiger) accompanied by brutishly out of tune yelling. Sadly for the SMH, I have no inside scoops to report as I took a pill early on and bombed myself out & the celebrations seemed tame in the end.

Vice Toff and I were up early to make this lovely brand new cafe in Victoria Park after an idyllic stroll through the Syd Uni grounds. Arriving at 915 we chose an outdoor seat despite protestations from the porcelain skinned Bradley. We were soon joined by our partied out Salsta who had been doing some partying of her own. Finally, we were joined for the second time in 3 wks by my Kel doll who is welcome to join us any time.

We all enjoyed this newly restored heritage Victoria Gothic sandstone building cafe which had a touch of  bush tucker berries et al on the menu as well as run by Aboriginal lady. Our food was enjoyed.

We had many belly laughs this morning with a 'Snog marry avoid' recap followed by two damsels from Wesley College locked out of their rooms calling our Vice master to be their prince and unlock the key to their rooms but not their hearts. The damsels were summoned to the Gardener's Lodge to our brunch club. Some of us said SNOG some of us said AVOID but no-one said MARRY.

Quiz score: Completely forgotten but it wasn't 20.


 
SAL SAYS: 3.5 bush tucker eggs
VICE TOFF (Brad ) SAYS: 3.5 bush tucker eggs
ANDREW SAYS: SNOG....4 bush tucker eggs
KEL SAYS: SNOG too. 4 bush tuckers.


                                         

Maggio's at Cammeray

The annual return to Maggio's for the anniversary.That being the third anniversary of one of the original founding members of Brunch club the inimitable & not to be forgotten DADP. Maggio's was Brad and DAP's local cafe. Three years may have passed but that doesn't make the loss any more palatable. To lose someone so special it does feel like the whole world is lesser. Therefore, we will continue to remember him every brunch close to November 20. Sadly, his great friend Jacqui couldn't join us this year but we hope she can join us next year.

 The service and food up to its usual excellent standard - groovy iphone apps for the waitresses had us impressed.
Delightful brekkie with the core brunch clubbers. Our brains were not switched on for the quiz today we only managed to scrape through with a miserable score of 13...OMG.

4 GOLDEN EGGS from us all

Robo Cog

This hipster Surry Hills cafe was refreshing and a little out of the usual. The urber cool apparel being worn by the customers was a little startling for Saturday morning.

We haven't been together for a few weeks so it was a good opportunity to exchange the latest in "shenanigans" of the group and some spectacular efforts I must say.





We had the pleasure of Kelly's presence this morning and what a treat it was to have another smart woman join in on our fun.



Food looked good the eggs beautifully presented. *the writer had already grazed at an earlier location so not that hungry - managed to sweeze in some turkish toast. Service was attentive which always rates highly with this brunch club member.

Conversation was lively today - must have been Kelly's influence. Contemporary music, Films and Politics of course. The continuing scandal at a Sydney University college and the political interference - as well as being front page news, the news itself not being well reported at all, a continuing disappointment that the standard of jouralism is so poor.

Quiz: An excellent quiz result today - 19.5/20 (and who would know the 5 Californian baseball teams ....REALLY) 

Ratings:

SAL:  3.5 goldens eggs, good service and food the restaurant in a former house just a little edgy and fun.
ANDY:
BRAD:

Urban Bites (King St Newtown) 3/11/12

Well faithful readers (special hello to Hien), we now arrive at today's brunch spot & firstly we do apologise for not blogging for so long which is becoming a habit.

After a break last Saturday in order to celebrate Brad & Andrew's double birthday (Brad's younger of course) at Maroubra beach, we found ourselves at this nondescript King st backpacker/uni student cafe without our dear third half who's off on a much deserved short weekend holiday up the North coast. Sal's absence was felt keenly particularly when it came time to do the quiz in which we scored an abysmal, embarrassing 14/20 (& that was with our 'Mad Men question'phone a friend lifeline).

However, was lovely for the two October 27 babies to reconnect again. Topics covered included party post-mortem, previous night reunions, the Canberra election, upcoming holidays (Coonamble, Cambodia & Darwin possibilities) & actors/directors are not special people realisation.

BRAD: 3 slight gooey underdone eggs
ANDREW: 3 snotty eggs

Le Petit Creme (Darlinghurst) 20 Oct 2012

Tres Bien! Keen to return to a Brunch Club favourite, who can go past the bowls of latte and the magnifique cuisine?! Unusually, we all opted for the same dish, the daily special - Eggs Benedict. Nothing special but very solid and reliable. Indeed, that sums up this local cafe.

Buzzing from the previous night's Noel Cowardesque wit at Belvoir's Private Lives, Brunch Club had much to discuss including the impending joint birthday celebrations.

The highlight of the quiz was question 15 whose answer seemed all to apposite, given the locale. 'What does STD stand for?'...


ANDY: 4 golden Eggs. I really liked the coffee bowls.
BRAD: 3 Golden Eggs. I too love the coffee but food is nothing special. Oh, and I had trouble parking. Must get that Vespa...
SAL:  An old favourite of mine, a great choice.3.5 golden eggs for consistency.

Not Bread Alone, (Crows Nest) 6 Oct 2012

Despite being shunned by one of our members who was 'burnt out' after a hard week (diddums!) and who was seeking refuge in a book (Wuthering Heights), Sal and Brad ventured over the bridge and back to Crows Nest to an old favourite - Not Bread Alone.

Reliable food and good service still pervade this local treat and a solid Brunch experience was had by all.

We shared our experience with the usual lower north shore crowd of dinks and young professionals, and Brad even had an unexpected re-union. Hard not to get a little nostalgic when back in Crowie.

Quiz was average, partly due to a worthy lack of knowledge about popular culture and inconsequential song lyrics but 16 wasn't too bad.

SAL: Love this place. Great food, especially the smoked trout. 4 Golden Eggs

BRAD: Glad to see this place is still good. 4 Golden Eggs.

The Dunes, Palm Beach 29 Sept, 2012

Eager for some coastal air and with our Interstate guest (regular) with us again, Brunch Club went to Palmy for a bit of posh nosh.

Despite the online booking system letting us down ('Oh, yes, we never check our emails".) the friendly waitress gave us the best table in the restaurant and so began a very pleasant brunch experience indeed.

Surrounded by Martha Stewart decor and with the gentle sound of breaking waves jut over the, well, .... 'dunes' of course, we began our chat with politics and theatre. Poor old Andrew struggled at times to keep the Club's focus on finalising theatre subscription choices for 2013. We were also occasionally distracted by the cliche middle-aged Nautica wearing types of the peninsula, but we were soon brought back to our core mission when the food arrived.

Big Breakfast, Eggs Benedict and the coffee were all first class. And we all enjoyed excellent service. Helpful but not invasive.

Surrounded by such beauty and with the cares of the week well behind us we reached a high with a 20/20 for the Quiz. Huzzah! [Stage Direction: Throw Good Weekend into the air]

We'll be back.

ANDY: 4 1/2 golden eggs. I fear we are all doomed to become our own Nautica-wearing types one day.

BRAD: 4 1/2  Golden Eggs. Loved it. I'm more a Ralph Lauren man but I know what you mean.

SAL: Darling, I love it. 4 1/2 from me too. Now pass me my Gucci sunglasses.

SHELLEY: Well done Sydney!

Pieno, Surry Hills

Well finally slack bum blogger arrives at blogging a cafe he can actually remember. This fine spring morning, we were at this very hip cafe with designer decor with a touch of Scandinavian. The clientele are very much the hipster market, including the gay hipster fresh out of the gym market evidenced by the menu's 'Seven egg white omlette.' We were divided on whether there were too many pecs on display or not.

This cafe had another lovely outdoor arrangement & our sunkissed morning had a hint of the summer to come. While enjoying the rays, we covered theatre & politics again ( perhaps we should write a political theatre piece?), as well as Brad's Thursday night celebration to mark the great Inklings author Charles Williams's birthday.(See pic below, though we can't really see him ever attending Pieno) He who is indeed the subject of  our brunch club member's P.H.D. Oh, there was also a bit of slightly lewd talk of the possibility of there being a brunch club baby in the future, in this case the talk was of tadpoles & eggs but for this setting referred to as egg whites.

Readers, we were perfectly quizzed again today, even though there were only 15 questions. Curiously, a note appeared above the quiz assuring us that the quiz would be reinstated to 20 questions again next week. Was that so they didn't get another protest letter from us again?

ANDREW: 3.5 egg whites. Loved it but I'm not hip enough.
BRAD:I am. 4 golden & very hip egg whites
SAL: Darling, I invented hip. 4 egg whites

Cafe Otto

Well the same slack bum blogger as last post is back to try & do justice to this nice little cafe with a particularly pleasant front outdoor area.

This cafe was a last minute choice by yours truly who had failed to remember the cafe name & instead sent one of his fellow brunchers to the other end of Glebe Point Rd. Apologies senior!!!!
WE had a bit of a spilt personality disorder experience with the weather this morning. Starting bathed in sunshine, then threatening cool clouds followed by a return to bright blaring sun in time for the return of one of our fave brunch club guest Mark (Toss ) recently returned from incredible o/s travel. We feasted on his many amazing travel stories & concluded it always pays to organise all your travel arrangements in advance just like Mark.

Talk covered the horrendous state government cuts to education, more politiking & the new Belvoir season namely the return of my beloved Jacqui M in 'cat on a hot tin roof'.

The quiz was almost as perfect as last week but sadly we faltered on only one question and that was this TV show; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1843678/

SAL: 3.5 golden eggs. Very attentive service & pretty good tucker.
BRAD: 3.5 golden eggs. Sal & I are becoming the new David & Margaret always agreeing these days as we get on.
ANDREW: 4 stars. For the lovely outdoor setting. Felt lovely.

The Bean Cafe Balmain

Well readers it is a challenge to blog a cafe three weeks after the fact. Unfortunately, I've been a slack bum & a busy bum but hopefully the memories of this lovely little Rozelle cafe at the top of Darling St will come seamlessly flooding back to me.

Firstly, I remember I arrived 45 mins early to this cafe as I had just dropped my friend Fliss at the airport for her return to Tassie & over-estimated the Maroubra to Airport to Rozelle trip on a sat morn. It was good to experience that Sydney hasn't yet quite yet come to Bangkok proportions of traffic.

So for 30 mins by myself I admired the decor, especially the framed original movie posters on the wall for classics  such as 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'A Streetcar named Desire' & 'Rebel without a cause' as well as classic 60s/70s concerts.


When my esteemed fellow brunchers arrived talk soon brimmed with the possibilities of the excellent new STC season (we will be

doing Belvoir & STC this year) ;http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/what%27s-on/season-2013.aspx

Also, this morn was the day of the Sydney council elections & so talk was ripe on one of our favourite subjects (especially two of us anyway!!) Sadly for those two, Sydney decided for more of Moore.

One outrageous thing, we decided that we had finally had enough of David Marr's vicious/bitchy/ repetitively myopic writing, so I tore his article on Tony Abbott (who I incidentally don't like) from the cover of the Good Weekend magazine & used it to mimic the wiping of my bottom. Now some of you may well be a fan of his & I apologise if my wiping offends (& I fear to write this due to the very close mutual friend we have in common) but the three of us had just had enough!
The food was delicious (not that I can really remember) & we achieved a perfect quiz score in what was remaining of the Good weekend.
BRAD: 3.5 golden eggs. Relieved to be back in a classy cafe after last week's truama.
SAL: 3.5 golden eggs. Concurred, happy to be free of the organic imprisonment.
ANDREW: 4 golden eggs. Staff were very nice too helping me also to love cafes again.

Bread and Circus (Fountain St, Alexandria) 1st Sept

To all our loyal Brunch Club followers we only have one thing to say...

DON'T GO HERE!

This morning's brunch experience has to go down as one of the worst. MAybe becasue we had been led to expect so much, maybe because some of us were recovering from the Marly dancing the night before, maybe because we had a predispositon for baulking at the word 'organic' or... no, actually, it is simply because this place is no good.

Behind the initially interesting setting of an apparently bustling industrially-chic cafe decorated with eclectic ornaments (See the photo of the large teapot et straw) was a pretentiousness which shocked even well-seasoned brunchclubbers. Which is fine, provided you deliver. This, they did not. In short, this place was all 'circus' and no 'bread'.

Snap shot of a morning in brunch hell:

1. No coffee. Yep, that's right. If you want coffee you have to walk out of the cafe and go to the Campos coffee stall next door (but in the same building) and line up to order, pay then wait to collect before taking back to the cafe. By which time you have been separated form the rest of your firends and missed the first installment of the morning's gossip. Even more bizarrely, when asked by Campos if 'having in or takeaway' one replies 'having in at the cafe' you are snubbed and only given it in a paper cup.

2. No water. Ok so this is not the only cafe that doesn't serve you water but this time you have to find the organically purified liquid infuser contraption, read the attached instruction sheet, attempt to operate the on/off button and self-cleaning device, only to be told then that the machine was down and there was a leak so sorry, no water. 'That's ok, I'll just have any tap water' 'Sorry, we don't do that' was the reply. But wait it gets worse...

3. Menu indecipherable. (see attached photo) Oh, and as I predicted, the obligatory "quinoa" was there right next to coconut non-dairy infused "organic" (of course) yoghurt.

4. Food inedible. Ok, I might be exaggerating here. Some of us quite liked their "organic" "not quite scrambled" (they looked scrambled to us!) eggs but my bircher muesli was disgusting. It was non-dairy and, we discovered later, had cardamon added but was bitter and awful. I shared it with fellow brunchers and they agreed. But as if that wasn't enough...

5. Poor service. An unsettling mix of 'tude' and 'try-hard'. You were left to fend for yourself and work out the system by trial and error. Again, it seemed that this chaos is designed to separate the locals from the visitors. Well, the locals can have it. To top it off though toward the end a waitress (if that's the right word) came over to me to offer another breakfast because 'I have heard you didn't like the bircher'. Well, apart from indicating that one of her staff had been eves-dropping in on our private conversation, it smacked of desperation and a sense that they knew we had, in fact, discovered that the emperor, like that of the original 'Bread and Circus' fame, has no clothes! And, whiel we resisted the temptation to point and laugh at said emperor we left quickly only to let you, our loyal followers, know the bad news.

RATINGS:

SAL:  2 1/2, and one of those was for the cute waiter.

ANDREW: 1. The worst cafe ever inspires perhaps the best blog entry ever!!Don't you agree readers? GO BRAD!!!!!!!!!!

BRAD: -1. Congratulations 'Bread and Circus' you are the first to achieve a negative egg on the brunch club scale. And let me assure you that this egg aint 'organic'!!!

QUIZ: 17/20. respectable but we'll try harder next time to build back to the 20.

urbanspoon review

Joe Black, Surry Hills

This hidden little gem right up the hyde park end of Commonwealth is easy to miss from the street. But we are glad we found it.  Glad we met Joe Black.

Many charming little idiosyncratic touches mark this cosy cafe. Diverse memorabilia lining the walls, particularly loved the juxtaposition of the famous Mexico city Olympics black power salute, Mohammed Ali boxing in front of a mirror& JFK with a framed Newington college 2006 Year 12 photo. But particularly memorable is the amazing siphon coffee which is produced using equipment normally found in a scientific laboratory (see pic) & takes a carefully detailed 15 minutes to make. Our coffee maker charmed us greatly, hello to you if you are reading this blog.

Before I go on to our review, we have to mention the Korean's young man's metro club that joined us (sat next to us but may as well joined us by sheer size and volume). The fashionabilitiness (yes I'm an English teacher so I have a license to make up words) of their shoes alone seemed straight from a Korean soap teeny bopper drama. This of course lead on to a discussion about plastic surgery.

Food was delicious. I went for Ham, cheese and avocado on toast which was lovely & I heard similar pleasurable mumurs/squeals emanating from my esteemed fellow brunchers. Coffee was like a ground-breaking scientific invention!!!

Quiz result this somewhat warm August morn was 19/20....if only we knew that Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller won an Olympic bronze medal in water polo. Incidentally readers, have you noticed the synergetic(more linguistic license) numerical pattern of our scores recently. 2 weeks ago = 17, last week = 18 & this week 19. Obviously, next week we will get a perfect 20.

ANDREW: Loved this morning. 4.5/5 golden eggs. Loved the coffee too.
BRAD: 4/5 scientifically prepared eggs. Great staff, totally relaxed as brunch should be.
SAL:

Barzura, Coogee Bay. 11th Aug, 2012

When the wind is howling and the temperature plummets, where else would one want to go but... the beach!.

Yes brunchclubbers, after some pressure from our coastal friend, we headed off to "Barzura" cafe at Coogee to sample the coffee and eggs (if not the rays). The cafe has a solid reputation and Brad remembered being here in the past when he was a 'local' for a few weeks (He was leant a friend's water view apartment right next door for a few weeks several years ago.)

We were advised to be there early and a good thing too. It is clearly a popular place with the locals. This may have impacted somewhat on the 'touch of a pre-fab feel' that was beginning to appear

Discussion topics were diverse but the level of contribution varied. The highlight was the spooky news of two different Robert Hughes in the news this week. One for being a brilliant mind and art critic, the other a child molester. Most unfortunate.

The Quiz: Well, shocking questions. All about popular culture, mummy porn and interior design. Still, the Club came up trumps and exposed at least one of us as having just a little too much general knowledge about such topics. Anyway, we scored a very respectable 18/20 but still felt like we needed a shower at the end of it.

Ratings:

BRAD: Good coffee but a little dull on the scrambled eggs which were a little too firm. You know I like things a little softer. 3 1/2 golden eggs

ANDREW: Thanks to my Coogee local colleague Kalliope for recommending this place. 3 1/2 golden eggs. Nice place but you must get here early. Sorry to my fellow brunchers that I had my period this day. Had a tough last 2 weeks & was nervous about doing the City to Surf in a twister. But shouldn't have worried, went amazingly well considering.

SAL: The highlight was the walk on the beach afterwards!

Dues Cafe

 

 A cool spot for anyone interested in custom bikes and also some interesting art works on the walls. Great brekkie. Brunch club this morning is missing one of our members whose left us for the Melbourne Film Festival this week end.

I really enjoyed my cured salmon with dill and creamy scramble eggs they were very good and coffee was okay. It was fun looking at the bikes and the accessories in the shop were great. I'd definitely go back to this one.

Conversation flowed freely about two of our favourite topics art and politics, interesting to note the painting of the Leader of the Opposition.

QUIZ: We did okay with the quizz 17/20 I think we may have improved on that score had Andy been with us.

SAL: 4 golden eggs the cured salmon was fantastic.

BRAD: 4 Golden Eggs. Especially as it was within walking distance!