The Coffee Club, Hallett Cove

August 6, 2012 - Alex Leave a comment

date of visit: Sunday 8 July 2012

A long overdue note of our trip to The Coffee Club at Hallett Cove. The Coffee Club is a chain so you find them all over the place – we’ve actually meant to try the one at Marion before but not got around to it. I see that the chain’s website notes that there are stores not only in Australia and New Zealand but also Thailand, New Caledonia and China. That’s an interesting collection of markets there …

The Hallett Cove café is spacious and even has a few sofas scattered around for those with a bit more time on their hands. We perched ourselves at a table on the edge, given we were encumbered (as usual) with a shopping trolley. Yes, I hate shopping that much that I need the reward of coffee and cake to get me through it …

One thing I noted immediately is that The Coffee Club isn’t cheap and it certainly doesn’t believe in small portions. Our choices, a vanilla slice and a lemon coconut slice, were amongst the smallest things on offer. For the baby there was nothing really – all the biscuits were saucer sized. So I ended up buying him a (massive) slice of date cake. Do all café goers really want giant portions of cake?

Still, the coffee, cakes and service all passed muster. Nothing spectacular or exciting – and the cakes really weren’t worthy of their price tags. But also nothing wrong with the experience.

If you’re after a very generic, inoffensive, coffee and cake experience, then The Coffee Club will do. Just be prepared to splash some cash and eat a lot!

Cafe TOB

August 3, 2012 - Alex Leave a comment

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.

Blogging News

August 2, 2012 - Alex Leave a comment

If you’re a food or drink blogger (and very often I suspect that the majority of food blog readers are other bloggers!) you might be interested to know that this year’s Eat.Drink.Blog (Australia’s own food blogging conference) will be held in Adelaide on Sunday 4 November.

A shiny new website will be launching at midnight tonight and, naturally, there is a Facebook page and twitter account so there is no excuse for not keeping up with all the information. As with all conferences, seats will be limited so keep your eyes open for registration details.

And note that it’s not just food bloggers. If you’re a beverage blogger we (that’s the organising committee, of which I’m a part, and the whole of South Australia!) would love to have you along too!

Adelaide people should also be keeping their eyes open for issue 2 of Gram Magazine. It’s a free street paper format food and wine magazine that you’ll be able to find about the place and this month you’ll be able to read the Eating Adelaide review of Udaberri, along with wine reviews by Vino Review, and reviews and recipes by other local bloggers, including Erin’s Hunza pie.