Codhunter

Little Larder Breakfast

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.

1/76 Moray Street New Farm
07 3358 2024

Fuscia Big Breakfast

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.

Fuscia.com.au
Cnr Audrey & Wardell St
Enoggera

Take away coffee

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.

Caffeine Espresso

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.

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.

Location: 100 Commercial Road, Teneriffe

Website: http://www.caffeineespresso.com/

Long Black Coffee at Cafe Chez Laila

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.

McCafe Long black coffee

Early on a Saturday morning I was on the way out of Brisbane with my sister to Warwick for a family function. She is a pharmaceutical rep, and consequently is used to living her work day from her car. She gets her breakfast on the run, buys coffees for her doctors from whatever chain is local to their surgery, and gets her morning coffee from a drive through. This Saturday, it was a McCafe drive through.

My sister and I ordered our long blacks. At this point my expectations were very low. McDonalds just does not exist in my mind as an option for coffee at all. After we had placed our orders at the drive through, we were then directed to park just off to the side. Once the vehicle had stopped we were set upon by a rabid surveyer intent on asking if we would buy more coffee from them at a location near where we live. Why they needed to know name, email address, phone number and blood type for this was beyond me. The coffees arrived before she had managed to climb into the car with her maps, pad and pens and we were on our way.

I actually did not mind the coffee. Maybe my expectations were set very low, or I just was not in the mood to be contrary, but it was OK. It was a little watery, and I suspect that even in a large cup they only use one shot, but it was not burnt and I did not regret having it without sugar. I have had worse in the past. For fast food coffee it was acceptable, and as long as you are not expecting a Sirianni’s or Illy coffee, it won’t disappoint.

Cibo Coffee

Cibo Espresso is a small Adelaide-based cafe franchise with a number of stores around Brisbane. One of them is in Westfield Chermside, in the northern foodcourt near Woolworths. They do coffee and a variety of Italian pastries and gelati. As a cafe the coffee is OK, but for food court coffee it is exceptional – it all depends on your frame of reference.

There is nothing extrordinary about the price, so I can’t even recall it. I think it is fair to say that unless it is either very cheap or really expensive, it is hardly a factor like taste and location. It is the location that I like with Cibo Espresso. There are two food courts in Chermside currently – the large one with McDonalds, KFC and a dozen or so more shops, and this smaller one without the fast food giants.  Coffee-wise, the larger foodcourt has a Gloria Jeans and a Muffin Break, while the smaller one is where Cibo Espresso and a Starbucks is located.

Why a Cibo Espresso long black?

So if you’re stuck in a shopping centre and looking for a coffee Cibo Espresso works out fine, though the food is overpriced for what it is. But compared with the other foodcourt coffee options, it comes out on top.

Xpresso Delight Pod Machine

At work we have just gotten a new coffee machine from Delight Xpresso. Due to the relatively low demand for coffee, the office has swapped the old machine for a new one. The New Pod machine uses satchels of pre-ground coffee instead of fresh beans, and requires a little more effort.

More flexibility, fewer buttons

Gone is the one button cappuccino and flat white. Now the coffee you end up with is determined by the length of the shot (pre-set or otherwise), and how frothy you want the milk.

I have actually found that the coffee tastes better with this one. This could be due to more control over the quantity of coffee, higher pressure, sealed coffee rather then what ever had been in the hopper for a week, or just because the older one needed to be descaled. Whatever the reason, or reasons, I do prefer the coffee.

So whats the point in all this?

I would choose this machine first knowing what I know now, but there is a learning curve, more of a gentle slope, but there is always someone who won’t bother getting the hang of it.

Illy Cafe long black

As a part of my job, I was sent down to the Gold Coast for the day to take some video and photos for use online.   It was a long, hot day, and I really do not like sand.  However, I did find something that I liked. There is an Illy caffe on the Gold Coast.

I found it on Surfers Paradise Boulevard situated amongst the fashion shops.  It has been a while since I was able to visit the Illy caffe on Eagle Street in the CBD in Brisbane, so I was very eager to take a break and grab a long black.

And why this matters

Illy does a very nice coffee blend, and their branded cafes are very good at demonstrating this.  Their look and feel are also very polished, and while their menu is also very limited, there is a real emphasis on good quality ingredients.  So, an Illy cafe is usually a very safe choice if you are after a good coffee.

Platform 6 breakfast

So a series of events involving an early Saturday, a slip in technique at the gym the previous week and misjudged travel time left me in the trendy suburb of Teneriffe with over an hour to kill. Fortunately, I was able to find a cafe. After walking past one that had too many cyclists and another that did not have comfortable looking seats, I found Platform 6, a small restaurant on Vernon Terrace.

And a toasted sandwich

It was a nice cafe, with inviting seating and convenient location. $3.50 for a long black did not seem that bad, and I went as far as ordering a toasted sandwich too. It eventually arrived sometime after the coffee. I did not pay attention to how long after, I was too busy reading.

And the point

It was nice, and all up, it came to $10 in total. They have their own 100% Arabic blend that has a strong flavor. Platform 6 is not just a cafe; it is more of a food and wine bar that just happens to be open in the morning too. For a weekend coffee in the morning, it does the job, and is a nice place to sit and kill time.