Kirribilli - green leafy classy exy suburb with a view to kill, also has a strip of cafes worthy of exploration. It's a small strip but has a cosy village feel. Garfish was our first stop and it attracted a large group - which is rather unusual as the first stop generally has no more than 4 people (too early on a saturday/sunday?) - but we were able to get our table of 10 pretty soon after the meeting time of 10 am, so we were able to ponder on the goodies on the menu.
On offer: waffle (with maple syrup, or banana and bacon, or banana passionfruit and ricotta), selection of fruit breads (banana bread, raspberry bread etc) that come with praline butter, and I missed out on a porridge with pear and fig compote with mascapone (ran out!) so had a French Toast with banana and bacon instead.
Hm the general consensus was it didn't live up to expectation: Waffle serving was a bit meager (for the waffle with maple syrup - just one waffle!), and it was quite ordinary. Raspberry bread was lovely, praline butter aromatic and give interesting texture. French toast was made with baguette type slices so the crust was rather chewy, plus it didn't seem to soak enough eggs so it wasn't as eggy as it could be (but was redeemed when drenched with maple syrup). Coffee was good though. I guess it could be better, for its reputation.
Pit stop: Epi d'Or with an apricot tart and an almond croissant for the CEO. My memory of this place is bowl of coffee, crusty croissant (which they would source from other boulangeries) that runs out mid morning, and lovely rye bread topped with ricotta and raspberry. It was virtually impossible to get a table though.
After a short relaxing stroll along the main strip we decided to move on to Mosman. Winding our way through the back of Neutral Bay (avoided the ever-congested Military Rd) we found our way to Bacino Espresso, and enjoyed an affogato with chocolate shavings on top. Not much sweets on offer: Napoli (prune paste wrapped in pastry) and the cannoli (ricotta and chocolate) were our token sweets apart from affogato. Hm, cannoli was tasty but rather hard/firm. The Napoli was a bit bland, I thought it might taste like the prune paste in moon cakes, but no... It wasn't rich and fragrant and moist.
Detour - L'Artisan Cafe, situated in a tucked away courtyard off Military Rd, what a fantastic find this one! French patisserie with crepes and chocolates on offer, and being the one learning French, fellow DDDs made me order in French (%$#@ I've only had 2 classes...) so we had crepe de citron, crepe de naturale, crepe de frachoises, et deux jus de fruit - jus de pomme, et jus de orange ... I give up. Lemon crepe, plain crepe, and a crepe with chestnut puree, rum, cream and chocolate ice cream, one apple juice, and one orange juice with two other fruits that I can't remember because I said it in French (excuses excuses). Fantastic atmosphere, lovely courtyard, rich/intense rum in the chestnut puree... ahh could sit there all afternoon.
Verdict? Generally good quality stuff up north, just not as exquisite as we'd hoped for, but when we've had such excellence from some of the earlier experiences we couldn't help but be finicky!!CS
PPS DDT CEO KT will be out of the country dancing the Argentinian tango and perfecting her Spanish for the next 7 weeks!!
