Bootsdarling, Darlinghurst (28 June 2014)

Despite the comedy of errors for some of us in finding this place, it was worth persisting. And especially as we had much to celebrate. The newly-minted 'Dr" was in the house (despite getting lost and lurking on the front counter for 20 mins not realising that fellow clubbers were already dining at a table out the back. Oh dear! Absent-minded professor symptoms already showing!) and special commemorative Charles Williams coffee mugs were presented to loyal Brunch Club supporters.

Together with the 'Nam' rellies and another guest, Richard, it was quite a gang. And quite a chaotic gang we were too this morning. But to their credit, this new little café took it all in their stride and we all left feeling like we had been served with style and care but no fuss. Just the way the Club likes it.

Bootsdarling was Sal's hot tip (which we had postponed from last week) and it proved a real winner. Good coffee, great dishes and excellent genuine service. This new addition to the growing bolt-hole coffee/cafes on and around this little stretch of South Dowling Road deserves loyal patronage.
True, it's cosy but its welcoming and homely. Yes, there is the ubiquitous hipster influence (and the baristas all had the obligatory Kelly beards) but somehow it didn't seem like they were trying too hard.

And the icing on the cake was a perfect score in the quiz. Huzzah! PhDs were awarded all round.

Ratings:

(Dr) BRAD: Loved it! The shredded pork was perfect and just the sort of hearty dish one needed on this sunny but brisk Sydney morning. The service has tipped this into a 4.5 golden eggs.

SAL: 'Darling' is right. I love this place! (once I found it.) Great to have 'Mummy and Daddy bear' with us again. The juice was particularly scrummy.

ANDREW: Worth getting up for.

Devon - 76 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills

Cool little cafe in Surry Hills - outstanding staff. Our waitress patiently took our order without writing down a thing and without a mistake. Plus we changed our minds several times and there were six of us!!! impressive.


Food was clever with an Asian influence, I had miso grilled salmon with a hash brown and the increasingly popular 63 degrees poached egg, beautifully presented - other interesting things on the menu were oxtail and the usual big brekkie food was available for the less adventurous.

 

The interior was clever a mix of retro and hipster but fun and comfortable. We sat out the back and with the outside roller door half way up a lovely breeze kept us cool.

With more than the usual number of brunch club members we had a plenty of brains around the table for the GW quiz - and the score was an impressive 19.5/20. Lots of chat around the table on the cast of South Pacific and Teddy's attributes! Films to be seen and decisions to be made for next years theatre subscription.

BRAD: 4 golden eggs - the waitress alone was worth it.

SAL: I too am giving 4 golden eggs for this little gem, inventive food, attention to detail and very good staff - as well as excellent company this morning.

ANDREW: 3.5 golden eggs

Gowings Bar & Grill - Sydney CBD (28 Sept 2013)

You know its been a great brunch when you lose track of the time to the point where the kitchen closes, the tables are re-set, the lunch shift move in and... you're still there chatting and laughing. Such was the case when an extended and cosmopolitan brunchclub made its way to Gowings Bar & Grill, located on the first floor of the much-loved iconic Gowings building on the corner of George and Market St.

For the males amongst us, memories of the Gowings that was - a place where gentlemen could get all their sartorial and toiletry needs attended to by polite and reassuring staff - were initially hard to reconcile with its re-incarnated state as a groovy ultra-Sydney venue that its interior designed to within an inch of its life. However, any reservations were soon swept away by the quality of the food, the congeniality of the company and the high quality of service - replete with even a genuine French waiter, can you believe it?!

While one of our permanent members had been granted leave, joining us this morning were guests from   as far afield as San Antonio, Texas, Walgett, the "inner

south" and even Woolhara. Animated discussion included the dedication and steely determination of our new PM (foreknown by one our members), lively debate on the the role of 'elite' sports at certain GPS schools, which prompted a reflection on the value of true eduction (the type that produces the lad who won the Alumni medal at a gala event last night). If only more successful people could quote John Donne! Such conversation would have nourished any soul but there was also the food...

Rockerfella Eggs-cooked at 63 degrees exactly, on brioche, with spinach and black caviar. Yum!
Smoked salmon tortilla puree advocados and green chillies - to die for!

SAL: 5 golden eggs! The tone, ambience, flavour and bon vivant was hard to beat. Too frigging cool by half but I loved it!

BRAD: 5 (63 degree) golden eggs. A new Gowings and a worthy successor. Service was spot on and I loved it.

GUESTS: Too busy to rank. Altogether... yummy!

Something 4 Jess

This unassuming small cafe in Abercrombie Street was a delightful surprise this morning. Art on the walls, a interesting menu using locally sourced produce from as far as the Blue Mountains was excellent. Service friendly and coffee was good.

The last gathering for a couple of months of the core brunch club team as Andrew heads off to the UK for a dose of Wimbleton, stawberries and champagne and importantly "the tennis" his obsession - that includes tickets to centre court!!! Brad and I will be left to carry on. So guests will be most welcome.

This morning I had Jeruselem artichoke puree with fresh date plum, braised zucinni, gold radish, pickled  turnips and mascapone on toast - and it was delicious. Fresh and very tasty - and the other standout was fresh green fig brushcetta with french tarragon, avocado puree, roasted red capsicum crispy speck and shaved pecorino also very good. And well priced.

Discussion this morning revolved around the media's fasination with the producer of the newest version of the Great Gatsby and the seemingly endless rounds of self promotion that are occuring.

The quiz was reasonable this morning scoring 17/20 which will suffice. 

SAL: Excellent I will come again - even though this is not a usual brunch club activity to repeat cafes this was so good I will be back - five golden eggs.

BRAD:

ANDREW:

Tapeo, Redfern, 10/02/13

Another wet summer Saturday morning - and this day found us in Redfern at Tapeo.

Six of us this morning and plenty of chat, from politics and art to religion and internet dating. Lots of laughs today.

The Coffee was good and the food was okay - something went wrong in the kitchen though the staff were being reprimanded for something which made for some tension - coffee spilling etc.

We were all enjoying each others company today though so the tension didn't spoil our fun.

I can't remember but I think we had full marks for the Quiz which we almost forgot and it happened very quickly at the end of brunch.

Sal:  2.5 eggs the ambience was ruined by the cranky owner and it was cold - food was okay but  not one I'd rush back to

Andy: Good company, so happy to be reunited with Susan Jane and Ian Powell (long time since he came to brunch). Thought Brad's reaction to having coffee spilt on him by a totally oblivous waiter was completely hilarious & worth the price of admission alone. 3 Eggs

Brad: Can't talk now, too busy trying to get the coffee stains out of my pants!

Cow Bell 808, Surry Hills, 12/01/13 & 19/01/13

This is the coolest and most fun cafe we've been to for ages. Lovely people running this place, great retro 80s albums on the wall and music playing. No attitude from the staff serving, very friendly - a family affair and a great mixed crowd.

Food was great, really enjoyed the fluffy ricotta cakes and the refried beans were also a hit. Not often we come back to a place twice. This one deserved a second visit.

So it was happy Australia Day we even had the busker - who really wasn't great getting in on the act.

We did very well with the Australia Day quiz. Up to our usual excellent standard.

Sal: I rated this very highly with five golden eggs - a rarity to get full marks from me.

Andy:

Brad:

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.


                                         

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

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: