Ikea; an unlikely source of brunch
Isn’t it every guys dream to spend at least one day of your weekend at Ikea? Well, not really in most cases but Ikea does brunch so it was enough to convince me to endure a trip to the shops to look at Kitchens and other interior decorating focussed doodads.
I have to say it is a bit disconcerting to buy food from a furniture manufacturer but I think Ikea actually sells the cheapest cooked breakfast you can buy in Sydney. There is a small set of options to choose from but everything on the breakfast menu is less than a fiver.
Options on the menu
You can either go down the sweets path with the dual pancakes for $3.95 or the savoury path which is a cut down version of the more traditional cooked English. I went down the savoury path which led me to even more options, the vegetarian breakfast and the hot breakfast. I managed to obtain both of these breakfasts for the princely sum of $5.50.
The vegetarian came in at $2.50 and consisted of scrambled eggs, bakes beans, hash browns and half a tomato.
The Hot Breakfast was the meat eaters option and consisted of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and a half tomato and cost $2.95.
The ingredients on the breakfasts were highly varied in quality. The hash browns and sausages were pretty tasty I have to say even though they were highly generic. One of the tomatoes presented to our party was not ripe and green and the eggs were being brought out to be served in massive trays that looked like platters full of tofu.
I also bought bottomless coffee which was good value quantity wise but some of the most terrible tasting coffee in existence.
So Ikea, good for those on a brunch budget. One breakfast isn’t enough if you have a hearty appetite but it is easy to scale up for a low price. If you are not very tolerant of shopping and other shoppers, avoid this place on the weekends as it gets pretty intense inside the store.
The cafe/restaurant actually opens half an hour before the store does so you can fuel up before you hit the showroom floor without losing any valuable browsing time. If you finish up your shopping and you’re hungry again, then there are $1 hot dogs for sale as you get through the check outs.
All in all, you cannot complain about Ikea’s interpretation of brunch, it is amazingly cheap and where else could you find a cooked breakfast like this for such a low price, check it out.
Hyde Park Barracks Cafe, Sydney
Hyde Park Barracks Café
After our recent delight with brunch at Sumac, as part of the Sydney International Food Festival, yesterday we thought we would try another café participating in “Let’s Do Brunch” during October.
We arrived at Hyde Parks Barrack Café on a sunny Saturday morning, and were unfortunately not offered the choice of an outside table, despite plenty of empty tables in the sun. After being seated at an inside table, the waiter explained the SIFF menu options.
Coffees
We ordered a couple of coffees, which arrived fairly promptly and were of good quality. The brand was Calima, which is a brand we will be looking out for in the future as we enjoyed the coffees. According to their website, Calima is the only Australian company locally roasting, processing and packaging 100% Colombian Arabica coffee.
Starter
First up at the Hyde Park Barracks Café was a starter of pastries, with fresh fruit. The fruit platter was a great mix, and the accompanying yoghurt with honey was delicious, however the pastries, 2 croissants and a lemon poppy scroll, were nothing special. It seemed unusual to give a table of two, three pastries to share.
Main Selection
The mains were a choice of smoked salmon ricotta hotcakes with hollandaise sauce and capers, or French toast with maple syrup and cinnamon poached figs. Daniel ordered smoked salmon hotcakes and I chose the French toast (no surprises there!).
The French toast was drowned in pools of maple syrup, which was a good thing as the toast was fairly average, and well, maple syrup makes anything taste great. The cinnamon poached figs were rich and delicious, so were a nice touch to an otherwise standard (and uninspiring) dish.
The smoked salmon hotcakes, well, they must have arranged a bulk deal on capers as the sauce was full of them, and was hard to taste anything else in the dish. The smoked salmon slices on top of the hotcakes looked dried out and had most likely been sitting under a hot lamp for a while.
Whilst we admittedly had high expectations after the 4 course tasting platter brunch we experienced in Sumac, the Hyde Park Barracks Café was let down by a lot of factors, especially the crucial ones, food and service. The fruit and yoghurt was high quality and definitely recommendable, however as we were never shown the regular menu, who knows if this is an option.
Brunch was the standard SIFF deal of $25 each, plus coffees brought the meal to a total of $57, which did not represent value for money. So as they say, not really anything to write home about here, sorry mum!
My suggestion, get to Sumac Darling Harbour before the end of October, or else you might have to wait another year before this brunch comes back.
Let us know what SIFF events you have enjoyed this month. Just leave a comment below to join the discussion.
Brunch at 35,000 Feet
Last Saturday morning I flew from Sydney back to catch up with my friend George who was over from London for a short visit to our old home town of Christchurch, New Zealand. I was flying on Emirates as the last leg of the Dubai > Bangkok > Sydney > Christchurch route.
It was a nice change for me to fly a full service airline as lately I’ve been flying budget airlines all over the country so along with the solid amounts of leg room, when I checked out the menu I was happy to see that they were serving brunch on the flight as I was worried there might not be a chance to have brunch during the weekend.
The Menu
Brunch was a multiple dish affair consisting of fresh fruit selection, a choice between a Creamy Chicken Korma or a Swiss Cheese Omelette and an Old English Tea Cake. We also got the standard bread roll and butter as well as the classic cheese and crackers combo with a small Emirates brand chocolate. Emirates provided us with a metal fork and spoon, but the knife was made of plastic which is interesting as I think you could do more damage with the fork to be honest.
The fruit selection was close to being past it’s used by date. It consisted of watermelon, rock melon and pineapple. The pineapple was turning brown and the rock melon was a bit hard a tasteless. The watermelon on the other hand was quite tasty so I downed that and left the rest alone.
The choice in mains was interesting, I’m not against eating a curry for breakfast but in this instance I had to give the Chicken korma a miss and go with the Swiss Cheese Omelette which was topped with a tangy capsicum sauce and accompanied by sauteed button mushrooms and roasted potatoes. The mushrooms and potatoes didn’t survive the reheating process very well and there was the traditional pool of water at the bottom of the dish, but the omelette itself was pretty good and the tangy capsicum sauce was extremely tasty.
The dessert of an Old English tea cake was interesting, the cake itself wasn’t anything special and was a bit dry, but they dryness of the cake was combated with a creamy vanilla sauce. Couple this with the cheese & crackers, mini chocolate and a couple of cups of passable filter coffee this made for a good end to proceedings.
Tip: If you’re really hungry, according to my little brother if you ask the cabin crew for a second breakfast they will bring you another one.
The Movie
You know that the human race has made some progress when you can have brunch in -50 degrees celcius at 900 km/h 35,000 feet up. Just when you thought that was awesome, every Economy Seat on Emirates has a 10.6 inch LCD monitor hooked up to their ICE (Information, Communication & Entertainment) system which gives you around 900 options of movies, television shows and radio stations to watch or listen to. I chose to watch Terminator Salvation, the latest movie in the Terminator Quadrilogy, it wasn’t flash but hey it was early in the morning.
So there we go, if you have had a good airline brunch let us know what airlines you rate for a high altitude brunch experience or on the flipside of that, any that you would recommend people avoid.
Sumac, Darling Harbour
Last Sunday we enjoyed a four course tasting brunch at Sumac, Darling Harbour, as part of the Sydney International Food Festival. This was definitely something different for even the most travelled brunching enthusiast.
Coffee
Sumac serves Di Lorenzo coffee and we ordered a flat white and a latte which were both fairly good quality, but coffee was not the draw card of the cafe, the food is what this place is all about during SIFF.
Starter
Brunch starter consisted of Cous Cous with nuts (macadamia, almonds) and dried apricots (pictured centre), Porridge with dates (pictured front), rice pudding with poached saffron pear (pictured rear) accompanied by a selection of heated milk, cardamom milk, stewed rhubarb and brown sugar.
The highlight for me would have been the rice pudding with the poached pear as well as the rhubarb stew with the porridge.
Daniel favoured the Cous Cous with nuts and cardamom milk combination.
Mains
The main course consisted of eggs with sides, meaning we got eggs cooked every way, including scrambled, poached and fried on Turkish toast. I took care of the scrambled eggs and Daniel took the poached and I must say the scrambled eggs were of very high quality compared to what you usually receive and they knew what they were doing on the poached egg front as well.
Accompanying the eggs were an amazing assortment of sides which included all of the traditional big breakfast usual suspects such as bacon, mushrooms, homemade baked beans, fried tomatoes, home made hash browns, blanched spinach, merguez sausages as well as some more exotic choices in the form of grilled haloumi cheese. The home made baked beans and hash browns were a nice touch and were both high quality which was great to see.
Another great feature of the main course of the brunch was the addition of a Tajine, we made the choice of the Lamb Tajine (pumpkin and feta was the vegetarian offering). This was accompanied by Turkish and Lebanese bread and included diced onions, capsicum and minced lamb with 2 eggs that were cracked onto the top which ended up being poached from the steam trapped in the tajine while it was being baked.
Desserts/sweets
As if the previous courses weren’t enough, the meal was finished with a raspberry and chocolate (pieces) pancake topped off with butter scotch syrup and chocolate fudge ice cream. We only managed to get through about half of this which wasn’t a bad effort as it was about a centimetre thick.
The last word…
On approaching Samuc from inside the Harbourside mall, I was a bit dubious about how good it was going to be, however once we were inside the Morrocan decor themed interior was a nice place to be with a view out over Darling Harbour. The crockery had an alternating Moroccan pattern to it and the wait staff were friendly and enthusiastic about the special SIFF menu which was great to see.
This special set menu brunch as part of SIFF is only available on Saturday’s and Sundays during October 2009 but it is definitely worth getting out of bed and heading into the city for on either day of the weekend as you won’t be finding an offering like this at many place around Sydney. At $25 a head it is expensive for a brunch and there is a 10% service surcharge on a Sunday but this offering is well worth the money. Make sure you are seriously hungry when you show up as there is a large amount of food put on the table, sometimes there is barely enough table real estate available for all of the dishes the staff bring out for you.
Happy brunching
Gabrielle
Welcome to Let’s Brunch
Welcome foodies and brunch lovers. This new blog Let’s Brunch is created by two “experienced” brunch eaters, and coffee lovers who will show you the delights (and maybe not-so-delights) of Sydney brunch dining, as well as cooking some brunch recipes at home from all our favourite chefs (especially Gordon!).
Join Dan and Gabrielle as we sample brunch menus across Sydney and abroad. This blog will also feature “guest reviews” from equally experienced friends and family. If you have a favourite cafe, restaurant, recipe or similar you would like us to review, or wish to feature as a guest reviewer, get in touch via info@letsbrunch.com.au.
Make sure you follow us on twitter (@letsbrunch) as well as Dan (@danpurchas) and Gabrielle (@gab_hegarty) for latest updates on where we are heading each week.
Live in Sydney? Want to join us for brunch? We would love to have your company – email info@letsbrunch.com.au
Look forward to hearing your comments. Talk soon.
D & G
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