date of visit: Sunday 22 September 2013
A rare visit out the other side of town saw us stop off at Burnside Village and, of course, any stop had to include the obligatory babychino.
It was a really lovely day and absolutely perfect for sitting outside on what is apparently known as the ‘restaurant deck’. We sat in some beautiful egg shaped chairs (a lot of excitement for an almost three year old in and of itself) enjoying the dappled light and admiring the selection of outdoor seating. At H by Felici you’ve got a choice of pretty much everything from high, bar style tables through to a huge sofa.
To be honest, the lovely, comfortable setting was about as good as things got. In terms of cake selection, my choice was limited, so I chose a chocolate croissant because paying $4.50 for a macaron feels just wrong.
I ordered our coffees, paid my money and went and sat down. And we waited. And waited. H by Felici wasn’t busy at all, and while I recognise that it styles itself as more restaurant than café, if you’ve made the decision to serve coffee and cakes you should be able to turn out a couple of coffees and a babychino in under the 15 or 20 minutes we waited. Whenever the toddler starts getting fidgety with a lot of “where’s my ‘cino?’ you know you’ve been waiting a while.
Sitting outside, we barely saw any staff so making an enquiry wasn’t going to be possible without heading indoors.
Fortunately, things didn’t come to that and the coffees and cake arrived. While I thought my caffe latte was pretty good, Andy didn’t rate his long black at all. The chocolate croissant had been heated (I hadn’t been asked if I wanted it warm or cold – but I guess this contributed to the delay) but all this had done was dry it out. The only moisture left was the odd bit of melting chocolate. Andy sagely pointed out “it was mostly air”.
We finished up and disappeared off. With very few staff around there was no one to acknowledge either our arrival or our departure.
As a restaurant the H by Felici experience may be either wonderful or terrible, but as a café the metaphorical socks really do need to be pulled up.
H by Felici
The Restaurant Deck
Burnside Village
447 Portrush Road
Glenside
phone: 8338 1427
