Cuckoo Callay, Newton (15 March 2015)
Sunday, March 15, 2015Cuckoo Callay has an enchanting bacon selection. Like a bawling toddler locked in the car park, 'normal' items are an afterthought best forgotten.
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| Cuckoo Callay, near Newton station |
I love the pink pig with balloon-like proportions on the menu. Enough to scare any vegetarian away. Probably highly arousing for everyone else (including Lorie).
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| Cuckoo Callay - 12 week Bacon Festival |
Cinderella's Breakfast is one of few interesting yet healthy choices. In the waitresses words - 'our dishes are very large'.
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| Cinderella's Breakfast - pumpkin fritters, house cured salmon, poached egg, basil pesto and tomato - $18 |
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| Bursting yolk on top the pumpkin fritter |
The biggest culinary tragedy is when the fork and stomach violently disagree. With an empty plate and no food to stab, my stomach was one unhappy customer.
Dish 2 is #Hashtag Browns 3.0. Try reconciling that name to fried croquettes with an egg, half an avocado and two rashes of bacon.
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| #Hashtag Browns 3.0 - Basil and cheese croquettes, poached egg, pea puree, avocado and bacon |
How do you distinguish between 'Black Forest Smokehouse' and supermarket bacon? (i) price, and (ii) word count. I don't understand the hype.
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| Best element of the dish? The croquette |
The waitress was desperate to please as I paid. Puppy dog eyes plus a confession that I was still hungry worked a charm. It was now the reverse of me feeding a crippled dog on the streets of Cambodia 5 years ago. In a moment of sincere pity, she awarded me choc-covered crispy bacon.
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| Choc-covered crispy bacon |
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| Cuckoo Callary interior |
Today's takeaway - the 12 week Bacon Festival is indeed a guise for an overpriced, gimmicky cafe that plays to an unsuspecting crowd.
Score summary below:
- Food - 6/10 - well dressed chefs, fancy kitchen but no skills with a salt and pepper shaker?
- Value - 4/10 - terribly small portions not reconciling with $20 mains
- Other - 9/10 - loved the pig, waitress absolutely faultless in her efforts.
- Overall - 5/10 - if it wasn't for the free choc-covered bacon, I'd be in tears.
Conclusion - you really need to LOVE bacon to even consider coming here.
Would I return?
Definitely not.
2 comments
Hi Mike
ReplyDeleteIt is a shame to see you were disappointed with the food at the cafe. We are in the middle of a bacon festival so we have a bacon themed menu running at the moment, hence the lack of healthy options! Unfortunately with very limited kitchen space we had to cut our regular menu down in order to offer the bacon menu in addition. To address your points though, we only have one dish over $20, everything else ranges from $6 - $20. We keep our prices as low as possible but we do have to charge a premium for only offering free range meat, this is the price we must pay to encourage sustainably reared animals. The average price of a breakfast on our regular menu is $16 (not counting toast). We often ask for feedback from customers and always try and take on board what they say. We generally get great feedback on our portion sizes and in fact the blog post right before yours ordered the same dish and said it was enough for two! I guess all that running made you extra hungry, but every person is different and we try to satisfy as many as possible. And regarding your last point, I would have to agree, customers must have a real love for bacon to attend our bacon festival, but right after that we'll go back to being a normal cafe, with regular healthy options and very reasonable prices. I hope you are able to visit us again at this time.
Thanks for the follow-up....nice to see a cafe that cares about it's customers.
DeleteWill return for the non-bacon menu post festival but this time would hope not to go home hungry!