Queen Street Café
12 Elizabeth Street
Croydon South Australia 5008
w Not available
e Not available
t +61 8 8340 0708
f +61 8 8346 1997
open Wednesday to Thursday, Saturday and Sunday 8.00am to 4.00pm, Friday from 8.00am to 10.00pm, closed Monday and Tuesday
FOOD the Queen Street Café has become something of an institution and now into its middle years (in terms of restaurant life) it has settled into maturity with a good deal of dignity. They have tossed out the dreadful pre=prepared lunch rolls that were always hard and cold and they’ve upgraded their cake selection and now buy their cakes from one of only three reliable bakers in Adelaide. They come from Muratti on Prospect road, a baker confident and cheeky enough to bring his cakes for the staff at Rockford wines on his way to a Stonewall Table. Queen Street Café has been cleaned up and dirty tea towels no longer languish on everyone’s shoulder and chef Bill Petropoulous doesn’t look like he should be sent home to iron his uniform, in fact he looks very nifty. There is something about a clean, ironed chef’s uniform, it’s a mark of pride. However these superficial complaints never really spoiled the breakfast or the coffee. The restaurant is located in the midst of some very cute shops, especially One Small Room, because it feeds our passion for quality 60s furniture at prices that will make overseas and Eastern staters weep for joy. You can even get a great haircut from the girls at Curious Orange.
Breakfast prices are at the upper end but represent real value for money. Eggs are perfectly cooked, bacon crisp, toast is thick and buttered (praise God!) and breakfast comes hot straight from the stove….yes! I detest eggs that are fried in a non–stick pan with a squirt of that disgusting aerosol canola and there’s definitely none of that laziness here. Breakfast items include all the usuals but come better than most. Toasted banana and walnut bread $10.90, fresh fruit, yoghurt, almonds and organic honeycombe $13.90 and Belgian waffle with mixed berry compote $12.90. Scrambled eggs, Springs smoked salmon, goats’ curd and baby spinach $17.90 is a pile of bright yellow soft big lumps of moist scrambled egg, ample smoked salmon and spinach, all on a couple of big slabs of buttered toast. It’s a gorgeous breakfast. They also have spiced braised beans with eggs and really the only thing that is missing is baked blood sausage and eggs. A recent Blue swimmer crab omelette with fresh herbs $17.90, despite the damned, so called ’wild rocket’ that seems to garnish 90% of food in Adelaide the omelette was utterly divine! The request for chilli and coriander instead of herbs was happily accommodated and the crab was sweet and delicious. An omelette is a tricky thing in a restaurant, after all Elizabeth David devoted an entire book to An omelette and a glass of wine. I detest the pale insipid tasteless offering taught as the classical omelette by our culinary colleges. Made by sous chef Justin Ghaddab it was faultless (by my measure), buttery delicate lightly browned bottom, soft enough to fold in half without breaking the outside edge (the true art of a bench mark omelette) and stuffed with perfectly cooked filling. Why should we be so surprised to find such a good breakfast, well the fact is that Adelaide breakfasts lag behind Melbourne where mostly the price is the same and the quality not even close. I find it bizarre that restaurant kitchens don’t have pepper mills and instead have nasty old pre ground pepper kicking around the kitchen for weeks on end to lose its flavour to the hot and sticky environment. Reassuring to notice a chef with two Peugeot pepper mills and everyone working at the stoves using them…hurray!
Coffee has always been great at Queen Street and here comes my only real breakfast bitch – raw sugar, which unless it is Billingtons organic, beautiful but very expensive, the raw sugar is mainly refined white sugar treated with Golden Syrup. It’s not exactly a healthy option and the treacley taste spoils the coffee. Looks like I need to add some white sugar to my pepper mill in my diner handbag survival kit.
Breakfast is all day and embellished with lunch items like their open steak sandwich $19.90 and grilled chicken salad with beans, egg, roast potatoes, olives and fresh herbs $19.90.
There is just one dinner service per week at Queen Street Café on Friday night and food basically comprises six main course items, three slightly upgraded versions of their lunch menu plus a steak, fish and a wet dish. It is very important to put the food in context with price, the steak a generous portion is just $24.90 exactly the same price as a recent disgusting fish and chips at the nearby Brompton Hotel. You can tell a lot about the food of an establishment by their fish and chips. These came squelching nasty fryer oil, chips coated is some unidentified spice muck, the so–called tartare sauce bore no resemblance and the salad was actually rotten. My complaint drew a shrug and I was charged full tote. No wonder they only had a handful of customers and Queen Street Café was packed.
The $10 five appetisers was basically comprised of items that came straight from the menu and perhaps two really good canapés for the same price would be more satisfying and interesting. The rabbit casserole with mustard sauce $23.90 bore no resemblance to the imagined dish, but then chef Bill Petropoulous is Greek not French. None the less is was delicious, cooked on the bone, tender and tasty with celery and very unexpected red peppers. The roasted kipfler potatoes with aioli $8.5 were ordinary and made me wish that Petropoulous might make the patates of his heritage city Kalamata where they are oven baked in fresh tomato with crumbled feta and a smattering of dried wild sage and thyme from the hills.
The rabbit was perfectly seasoned and could have only been improved with a few minutes under the salamander to introduce some caramel flavours. Dessert a crème brûlée came in a massive milk coffee cup but the crust was thick and burnt bitter and the shape and size meant that the brûlée was icy cold. Warmed for a couple of minutes in a dish of hot water thinly dusted with pure icing sugar and perfectly torched it would have been good. Despite these criticisms the rabbit main course was so good and generous I’d be happy to return and probably finish with an Affogato rather than dessert.
Breakfast and lunch are fab at Queen Street Café but with the exception of mains dinner needs some work. This is not forgetting the price, which is very modest, but I think with a little firm prodding and rough critical encouragement Billy Petropoulous and Justin Ghaddab might turn dinners at Queen Street into something a bit special.
WINE fully licensed – two sparkling, four white, five reds and a single rose, the most expensive the 07 Simonet Blanc brut $48, but the rest are mainly around $35 and just under $40. A glass of 08 Lofty Valley, Shiraz $8 was a generous pour and came in a decent glass. What’s not to like……nothing!
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shopping
there is some very cool shopping nearby a particular favourite One Small Room specialises in ’60s teak furnitute and has some very nice handmade childrens clothing and jewelery. Orange Hair Cutters come highly recommended if you are looking for a cut and colour, and there are a few other funky shops in the strip. |
