Cafe Olive, Seacliff

Sausage roll
Sausage roll, chips and a small hand – no respect for the art of the blog!

date of visit: Monday 16 January 2017

During the school holidays I had this idea that it would be a great opportunity to visit loads of new places with Master 6.  After all, we had six long weeks to fill and various forms of social media were full of parents (mostly mothers) bemoaning the extended stretch of time and the traumatic requirement to entertain children.

I can only assume that these people have a very different idea of what constitutes ‘entertainment’ to me. I did some preparation before the holidays – I will ‘fess up to that – but by the end of the break, we most definitely were not running out of things to do (in fact, we had to put in a bit of an effort to use up some vouchers I’d bought!).

Master 6 loves the beach so one warm morning we headed off. We were planning on hitting the beach we always go to, but I decided, last minute, that we should go to a ‘new’ beach – variety being the spice of life and all that.

Seacliff is not exactly new or undiscovered but we had our swim and then headed up to the Esplanade to grab something to eat. Master 6 spotted the pub but our last experiences there have been pretty average (to say the least!) so I steered him towards Cafe Olive, right next door.

It’s a very cute, airy cafe – there are seats on the footpath, as well as inside in an enclosed verandah AS WELL as inside the building proper. There are bench seats, normal tables and even a SWING.

It’s green, it’s cool, it’s casual – it feels really beach-y and creates a very distinctive vibe from the pub next door.

A lot of the cafe’s products are made in house. Master 6 ordered himself an iced chocolate (decidedly, the largest drink known to man – far bigger than his head) and one of the house-made sausage rolls, served along with chips and salad. I ordered the spinach and feta tart.

Spinach & feta tart
Spinach & feta tart

You’ll see from my photo that there might be an argument for the tart suffering from the dreaded soggy bottom but I love pastry so much that didn’t bother me. What I did like was the balance between cheese and spinach was spot on. So often, you order some spinach and cheese pastry and it’s overwhelmingly (and sometimes inedibly!) salty. Not so here!

The sausage roll was also delicious – however, Master 6, by now sated by the iced chocolate, had a bit of a wobbly moment because it didn’t look exactly as he’d been expecting. He had been hoping for one (or possibly more) of the bite size sausage rolls, just like the ones produced by his grandmother and our family friend, Trevor. This was just too big!

Of course, this didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for the chips or the salad.

I was really impressed to find a venue with so many goodies made in-house – especially things like pastries which so many places just buy in. The coffee was good, the iced chocolate was rated excellent (this may be due to size …).

Definitely a venue I’d head back to. In winter, it would be stunning to sit in the warm and watch the sea!

Cafe Olive Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

Cafe Olive
1/220 The Esplanade
Seacliff SA 5049
phone: (08) 8296 8824