Cafe Reviews

Cafe TOB

- Alex Leave a comment

cafetob

date of visit: Sat 28 July 2012

We are in the process of buying handles for the cupboards in our bedroom. We have been in the process of doing this for about 3 years. Part of the problem is that the current handles don’t really bother me and I have no interest in shopping for new ones.

However, my mum mentioned a good handle shop at Glenelg and then added that it also had a café. If there was ever a way to get me into a shop it’s bribing me with food and drink so I actually suggested that we head off to Trading on Broadway, look at some handles and then we could have coffee and cake to recover.

The cafée is called Café TOB and you enter the tiny courtyard through the shop. While the café does offer more substantial food – think tarts, lasagne, arancini and soup – we were just snacking.

Andy pronounced the carrot cake excellent and my chocolate muffin (served warm) was good too. Although it was a large muffin (something I’m normally very wary of) it was light, rather than stodgy, and laced with chocolate chips. The coffees were good too.

What really set Café TOB apart was the friendly service. The baby’s babycino arrived with a teddy bear chocolate biscuit* and the staff were absolutely lovely. We really felt as though they had an interest in ensuring their customers enjoyed themselves and were looked after.

It seems ridiculous, but that can make such a difference. Think back to our negative experience at Un Caffè Bar at Hallett Cove. It wouldn’t matter how awesome their cakes had been – we wouldn’t go back. But the friendly service at Café TOB makes me want to go back and have lunch there.

Oh yeah, and buy cupboard handles …

* Other cafés could really learn from this. So often we go out and the cakes and biscuits on offer are so huge they’re unsuitable for a toddler solely by virtue of their size. The biscuit arrived gratis but had it been 50c or $1 we would have been more than happy to pay for it.

Cafe TOB on Urbanspoon

Un Caffe Bar, Hallett Cove

- Alex 1 Comment

 

 

This café has now closed.

date of visit: Saturday 22 June 2012

I work on the premise that venues are either open or not. If a venue is open and a customer walks in that customer gets treated the same as a paying customer at a different time of day.

I daresay you can guess where this is heading. We turned up at Un Caffe Bar in the Hallett Cove Shopping Centre somewhere between 3 and 4pm on a Saturday. I know this isn’t prime time, by any stretch of the imagination, and I know, from having worked in retail, that people who turn up close to closing are really pretty irritating. However, the Hallett Cove branch of Un Caffe Bar is open til 5 so you’d have thought our visit would not pose a problem.

Not so – the baby and Andy ensconced themselves at a table and I headed over to order coffee and cake. There were two staff – one of whom was chatting to some friends, and showing no sign of getting a wriggle on to attend to any other customers (that would have been me). The other member of staff was busy making coffees for these friends. To her credit, she did apologise a couple of times. Unfortunately, short of reminding her colleague of their core business in a rather public fashion, I appreciated that there was little she could do.

Order finally placed, I sat down to be informed that the high chair was ‘filthy’ (Andy’s exact words) and so we began our wait. Our order was for 2 coffees, a babycino, a biscuit and slice of lemon curd cheesecake. The wait was far longer than you’d expect and when our goodies turned up we were short a biscuit. Because the staff were ‘busy’ (which means that they were standing by the coffee machine, chatting and eating some of that same cheesecake) I had to go up to the counter to ask after my biscuit.

I doubt I need to go into any detail about exactly what I think of that level of service.

On the plus side, the coffees were definitely passable, the cheesecake was tasty and I was impressed that I was asked if we wanted marshmallows with the babycino. But, having parted with $17 and being treated so poorly I doubt we’ll be heading back.

The Hallett Cove Shopping Centre has more than its fair share of places to have coffee – and I know from personal experience that one rates as very good (I’ll go again and then write it up … I’m a martyr in that way …). So there’s just no need for anyone to put themselves through slow, shoddy service.

Un Caffe Bar on Urbanspoon

Cafe Balthazar

- Alex 1 Comment

Balthazar

date of visit: Saturday 30 June 2012

So, I used to have a cat called Balthazar – I was naming cats after sizes of Champagne bottle (prententious? not at all – the current cats are named after physicists …). And when I spotted the newly opened Café Balthazar on Fiveash Drive I wanted to visit purely on that basis alone. Despite the massive renovations of the complex (now called Pasadena Green), Café Balthazar, which is very black, silver and sparkly, is easily visible from the road.

We used a trip to do a weekly shop as an excuse to check out the café. After a particularly unpleasant half hour or so in the supermarket, I was more than eager to have a sit down and a coffee and cake.

As I was dropping the shopping in the car, Andy was in charge of my coffee and cake ordering. This meant I had a coconut macaroon tart (yum!) and a cafe latte, which is my standard coffee ordering. However, Café Balthazar offers the discerning coffee drinker quite a choice, including filter coffee (yawn) and siphon coffee. I was pretty ticked off that I missed out on the siphon coffee because, as far as I know, I’ve never had it before. That – and the kit for producing it looks pretty cool.  I guess that’s an excuse for another visit …

The cafe latte was good – no reservations at all about it. I see that the coffee also gets the thumbs up over at Coffee Snobs. The coconut macaroon tart (which, judging by the broad selection of cakes, is probably bought in rather than made in house) was good too although I thought that the pastry was a little bit thick. Andy’s coffee éclair looked really tasty and must have been because I didn’t get to try any.

The baby’s high chair matched the décor (black and much more stylish than he’s used to!), and both the babycino and my tart got the seal of approval. The café seems very family friendly – there were plenty of other babies and children around (but, thankfully, NOT running amok).

In a wise move, the café also has an ice cream counter which opens directly into the supermarket entrance. I can imagine that in summer they’ll be doing a roaring business there!

Café Balthazar also does proper lunches and the food I spotted on other tables looked like good, solid servings.

The people of Pasadena should be thrilled to have this café on their doorstep. I always get the impression there’s not too much in Pasadena (I’m happy to be corrected) and the busy, happy vibe of Café Balthazar can only be a plus.

Balthazar Cafe on Urbanspoon