Saturday, January 12, 2008

Awaba Cafe, The Esplanade, Balmoral

Awaba Cafe, The Esplanade, Balmoral
Saturday 12 January, 2008

I vowed never to return after my last visit.......but this morning we had a shocker trying to find a park, the Watermark finishes breakfast at 10am, the SandBar looked boring and we had both been to Bathers and Beaches recently.. So, we arrived at Awaba around 10.45am and were left standing at the entrance for about 3 minutes. My breakfast buddy gave them 2 minutes to seat us after our presence was acknowledged and fortunately they pointed to a vacant table and indicated it was ours.

Our waiter was sullen and carried out his role with a complete lack of interest. We asked for water and it arrived 20 minutes later, but thankfully the coffees arrived promptly. The breakfast menu is lean but I still struggled to make a decision. One thing that did help was my usual breakfast order was not on the menu - eggs benedict.

My breakfast buddy highly recommended the slow roasted tomatoes with avocado and wood fired bread. So, that was easy - two please. The view from Awaba is gorgeous, especially on a beautiful day when the water is sparkling. The construction next door or the abysmal service doesn't seem to deter the locals as it was packed with crowds hanging around the tight entrance.

The food was lovely and I seriously enjoyed every mouthful. The avocado had just the right amount of lemon in it and was easy to spread over the two large slices of toast. The roasted tomatoes fell apart and soaked into the toast.

With the growing crowd outside, Awaba is not the place to sit and soak up the atmosphere and as we were not keen on another round of coffees we asked for our bill. I don't think our waiter spoke two words to us during our visit and this was duly rewarded by our non-tip.

Although I enjoyed the food today, I'm still not a convert.

Awaba Cafe - 67 The Esplanade, Balmoral - (02) 9969 2104

http://www.awabacafe.com.au/

2 Comments:

Blogger The writer said...

The breakfast buddy wholeheartedly agrees. It is such a shame that they are so lax with the service – a tad arrogant by their high occupancy I dare say, makes them think that they don’t need to invest in service 101. Oh... and they had the audacity to impose a 10% surcharge as well!

9:28 pm  
Anonymous Paul said...

The service is awful and arrogant, the food is of simular quality, and I was made to feel like they were doing me a favour by letting me spend money there. Very expensive for very poor quality. But worse than that, when you to the bathroom, you get to see into the kitchen, which was disgustinly dirty, as were the bathrooms. I was suprised I was not sick after eating there, and will never return

12:46 am  

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