Nutrition Station, Niddrie, Melbourne (permanently closed)

Fresh good quality food. The staff is helpful and customize meals without fuss. Friendly atmosphere. I had a veggie burger with sweet potato chips and it was quite lovely. However, the placed lacked ambience or character. Despite the place being semi-empty, the service was unacceptably slow and the staff had limited English. The meal was also a bit tasteless and poorly seasoned. Overall, not worth my money. 

 

 

Read More

Industry Beans Lt. Collins (Melbourne CBD)

I visited at around twelve. Due to the photos of food on Zomato, I thought that they would be serving cooked prepared food. However, this is not the case. They serve coffee and have a small cabinet with prepared rolls, sandwiches, raw balls and cupcakes.

The place is cute, modern and in a killer location. 

Coffee was well prepared but one of those too-much-milk coffees that is spreading like a plague throughout Melbourne. It might be just the beans they use or the roasting, but it was a meh coffee, totally postmodern meh.

I tried one of their cranberries raw balls, and I have to say it was absolutely delicious, filling, filled with goodness, totally tasty, not greasy and not sweet. One of the best raw balls ever!

Staff were underwhelming, reactive to any comment or action,. Thank gosh for Mr "Skinny Water', who understood what customer service is all about. 

MIND
> No large size coffee cups or takeaways.
> No cash accepted. That's right!
> Receipts on paper not given. If you want yours, you add your email and they email it to you.

Read More

The Cafe at Hyatt Regency (East Perth)

The Café is located in the central hall of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in East Perth, facing the central fountain and the piano player. I had a High Tea session at The Café recently and a very enjoyable visit but, overall, I felt this was not proper High Tea and more a buffet experience.

The place is very pleasant, but it lack finesse and elegance, and I thought that looked like a hotel café, but not a Hyatt hotel café. Perhaps good enough for Perth, but I don't think it matches the wonderful High Tea experience I had in Rochelle Adonis a few years ago or that in other Hyatts. 

The food on the three-tier tray was  mediocre, and the sandwiches were dry and tasteless. The wrap rolls were very nice, though, especially the green one.

The savoury options were just six and mostly junk food, and nothing that makes any favour to the Hyatt. The dumpling was definitely the best item there, the rest totally average and forgettable.  

The sweet section was way more interesting, varied and I regretted not limiting myself to the sweets. I loved the mini-dessert glasses, and I tried them all! Overall quite nice, but the ones that really stood up for me were the tiramisu, the mango and lychee, and the black forest. Among the others, the strawberry lamington was lovely, as well. There were many different sort of mini-slices snf big slices from a big cake, waffles, fresh fruit and much more. If you have a sweet tooth and a big stomach, you will really enjoy it. I loved the fact that their sweets aren't overly sweet and I would have had liked having a bigger stomach to try then all!

The price is 52 and includes flowing champagne, coffee/and tea before 5pm and they are generous! I barely drink these days, but I think it will make happy most people and they stop by often to ask if one wants a refill.

The staff were here really welcoming, very attentive and friendly, and they made the visit especially pleasant for me.  The sort of people who I really enjoy in hospitality: hospitable, smiley, and genuine.
 
This is not a High Tea, but a good-priced pleasant buffet experience. You won't find anything really remarkable or gourmet, and won't need to dress up for this visit. Of course, sometimes you just want that, fill your belly, eat many things and be merry. So this place is great for that. Having the piano player in front of the café makes the experience especially pleasant if you happen to seat in the tables facing the lounge. If you want a High Tea with finesse, glamour and class, go to Rochelle Adonis in Highgate.

NOTE
There was a table with the 3-tier tray with food on an empty table. Nobody came, the food stood  there for two hours... that is unacceptable for any place, let alone for the Hyatt.

Read More

Pastelería Isla (Granada, Spain)

    

Calle Carrera del Genil, 27
    18009 Granada
    Spain
    Phone: +34 958 222 405
    Website

This patisserie was the first opened by Casa Isla in Granada (the original was founded in the nearby town of Santa Fe in the 19th century) and it was one of the few patisseries in the city when I was a kid. The place was a hang-up place for families on Sundays, after Mass, and was one of those places you would go to buy your sweets for birthdays and presents.

This is not a posh in vogue patisserie place by any means, as it is an old very small cafe, with a very limited seating area. Still, it has some elements that remind the visitor of its former splendour years, with a lovely marble counter, the chandelier lamps, the framed Royal Appointment, among other elements of decoration. The chairs used to be the traditional wooden ones, round tables, which I miss, because they made the perfect old-style cafe and were way comfier than the current ones.  

They sell a selection of traditional sweets, cakes, slices, tarts, (and ice-creams and ice-cream tarts in the warmer months), but most people come here to have a coffee with a pionono or to buy boxes of piononos, which are delivered fresh every day and disappear every day way before closing time.So, what is a pionono? It is a small sweet that you will only find in this city, no other place in Andalusia, Spain or the world. They could have the same name, but they are not the same. The original Granada pionono is a historical piece of patisserie. The founder of Casa Isla, Ceferino Isla, was its creator. This man was very religious and wanted to create a special sweet to honour Pope Pius the Ninth (Pio Nono in Spanish). So, he created a small cake that reminded him of the Pope's shape: plump, roundish, short, its head covered by a papal cap. In 1916 King Alfonso the 13th, while visiting a friend in Granada Province, was offered some piononos with his mid-afternoon tea. He loved them so much that he appointed Ceferino's patisserie an official provider of the Spanish Royal House. A title that the bakery still holds.

The pionono is a golden small, short, plump spongy cylinder rolled over itself, slightly infused in syrup, topped by a round "cap" of toasted cream. It goes in one morsel, or two, perfect to date your coffee.  It  has a distinctive flavour, it is moist, mid level of sweetness, fluffy and very fresh.

Lately, the traditional piononos have been joined for some summery flavoured versions that are far behind regarding flavour and quality except for the citrus one, which I loved.

There are piononos in other patisseries in the city but they are not as good or fresh as the ones sold here.  Regarding other sweets they sell, varies from type to type. I like some of them and not others. I used to love their ice-cream tarts when I was a kid.,

Service changes from person to person, some of the ladies lovely some others a bit dry and matter of fact. Thank Gosh for the moist cakes :).

If you are lucky to grab a seat, you will stay here for a long time, as this is one of those places that, for whatever reason, keeps people there talking for hours. No joke!

This places is part of my emotional-belly memory. Even the things I don't like make it special to me.

Read More

Rey Fernando (Granada, Spain)

   

Calle Reyes Católicos, 28
    18009 Granada
    Spain
    Phone:  +34 958 224 949
    Website

Rey Fernando is one my fav coffee spots in the city because of its killer location in the commercial Reyes Católicos St, but also because of their coffee  and cake slices.

The place is tiny, the preparation and display area occupying most of the premises, and the seating area is reduced to a few stools around the counter, and the upstairs seating area.

I love mousse cakes and slices so many o their sweets fit this bill perfectly. I absolutely love and recommend their Rey Fernando cake, as in my photo, which they also have with a white chocolate crust. I also like their piononos when they are fresh.

They have a lovely selection of ice-creams, gofres, pastries, frozen yoghurt, chocolate drinks, fresh juices, granita, and what is not.

The staff are very hard-working and lovely. They are matter of fact if you don't speak Spanish, as most of them have a very basic English, which does not allow them to interact with customers much. They are just lovely if you happen to speak Spanish or just make the effort to say a few words in Spanish.

MIND
> The coffee preparation and quality varies depending on the barista.
> The place is crowded at Spanish coffee times, so you have to stand.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Their piononos can be hiper-fresh or a bit stale. I guess it depends on the delivery days from the mother-bakery in Santafé, but I have seen noticeable differences in the level of freshness and taste depending on the days I have visited.
 
DOWNSIDES
Don't order churros! I have seen here cold churros being reheated, it is usually non-locals who come here for churros, not knowing that they have awesome churro places in Plaza Bibarrambla, three minutes away, prepared on the spot fresh all day long.

Read More