Away from Brunswich street, Little Larder is as off the beaten track as you are likely to get this close in to the Valley. It’s a cute little cafe in what looks like it used to be a corner shop.
Their menu is a little different from standard cafe fare, though most of the breakfast otions are based on egg. The coffee was decent too. Not the best, but it would not disappoint either.
Little Larder is a nice place to go to for breakfast. The location is great, and the cafe itself is as laid back as the street it is on.
Lavazza is used in a lot of cafes. Someone once told me that it is one of the harder coffees to screw up. The barista at Fuscia could have made a decent coffee with almost anything though.
Their big breakfast was good too. It comes with the usual sausages, eggs, mushrooms, toast, tomato and spinach. They were also very generous when I asked to swap out the eggs for more mushrooms.
You won’t be able to go for breakfast during the week, as they are only open for lunch and dinner between Monday and Friday. Fuscia has also won a number of business and food awards since 1997.
What is the payoff?
For a weekend breakfast with nice food and coffee, Fuscia is a place to check out. The dinner menu looks good and the cafe is easy to get to and has decent parking.
The Easter Weekend is a bad time to try to do anything. Shops keep odd hours, assuming they open at all, and then there are the family gatherings. On the Saturday it was hard to find anywhere local and open for a quick coffee, and that is why I ended up getting mine from a plant store.
It was not too bad. The coffee was ok for $3 takeaway and the store was on the corner of Sandgate road and a side street, making access and parkingcont easy. What made the difference the other weekend was that it was open. It might of been a plant store, but I could buy a coffee there when everywhere else was closed.
There is a small cafe called Caffeine Espresso just next to my physiotherapist’s office, opposite Sol Breads on Commercial Road, Teneriffe. With some time to kill before my appointment, I ducked in for another coffee and a sit-down. The cafe is fairly narrow inside, with one side lined with tables, and the other with a bench. Newspapers were scattered liberally on the tables. I had an entertainment liftout and a part of the business section, were some colleagues ended up recommending me the ProSkins site for gaming.
As busy as they were, I got my coffee and cookie before I had settled into reading March’s ‘Marketing’. The clientele seemed to be mostly locals with the odd cyclist mixed in. The price of a long black was fairly standard at $3 and the coffee was great, one of the best I have had. They do their own beans and their 3rd place Golden Bean award seems well deserved. I have to find out who came first and second now, if the quality of third place’s coffee is anything to go by.
So why care?
The coffee is really rather good, and they roast their own beans. It seriously is. They also serve Byron Bay Cookie Company snacks and the breakfast looked OK, though I did not eat there. Parking is easy if a 50 metre walk won’t kill you. If you are local, just walk; it’s a pleasant way to start your morning.
It was a Friday afternoon and the office relocated to Portside for an afternoon of beverages, team building and beer battered chips. The venue was Cafe Chez Laila at Portside and I opted for the coffee.
Portside is on the Brisbane river, just down from Racecourse road. It is a great location, with a number of different cafes, bars and restaurants, some of which are right on the river. Cafe Chez Laila was not. But you could still see the river from where we were sitting outside the cafe. The kitchen closed before we could get a second batch of beer battered chips, but they still served us drinks.
Why?
It was an OK cafe, and the coffee had a strong flavour. I can not comment on the, as I never really saw it. They chips were good, but mostly, Cafe Chez Laila is about the location. That afternoon there was a pleasant breeze coming off the river, and in the failing light of the afternoon, it was a great place to just relax.
