date of visit: Saturday 15 December 2012

It’s not often that Andy and I find ourselves wandering around the western end of town looking for morning tea. In fact, I’d say it’s pretty close to never. However, we’d been lucky enough to stay in town after our work Christmas do (has anyone noticed how Mexican seems to be a corporate Christmas party theme this year?!) and, the next morning, we took the opportunity to check out some shower heads in a city showroom (quite rock and roll, but when your shower is held together with limescale a somewhat necessary exercise).

This meant we were wandering along Hindley Street looking for a spot of morning tea. Tempo was pretty much the first place we came across that was open. The café is in the foyer of the ASO‘s Grainger Studio and I daresay that during term time and performance time it does a raging business. At about midday on a Saturday it’s very quiet.

We just ducked in for coffee and cake. While iced coffee wasn’t on the drinks board it was available and I also had a melting moment.

The iced coffees were awesome. At just $4.50 each they came in big (imperial) pint glasses and were simple: coffee, milk, ice, and ice cream. Have you ever noticed that the more someone stuffs around with an iced coffee the less good it gets? That was not a problem here.

The melting moment did the job too – although it was less impressive and exciting than the iced coffee!

The staff (there were two men working – one working the coffee machine and one doing front of house duties) were both really friendly and made sure they took the time to say goodbye when we left.

While we hardly undertook a comprehensive survey of what Tempo has to offer, it’s somewhere I’d definitely go back to.