Cafe Royale

Rating: 1

We ate lunch here in February 2022.

Big breakfast
Jackfruit burger

We haven’t been somewhere this shambolic since The Cooperage Cafe, and Cafe Royale was even worse. When we arrived we were fourth in the queue. Ten minutes later we were still fourth in the queue. It was immediately obvious that the cafe was disastrously understaffed, with just two servers running around with their heads on fire instead of taking the orders of the people who were waiting. As can happen when the world is ending, these two were just doing the next thing that appeared in front of them like putting chairs nicely around tables, and stacking the menus in their holder. Priorities, ladies!

There was a bizarre queuing system at play. You had to bags a table by leaving your coat or umbrella on it before then queuing up for all eternity. We suppose that they wanted to avoid people getting in the queue, waiting, and then finding out that there were no tables, but frankly they were causing that problem themselves with their glacial service.

We had been standing around in the queue for quite a long time when it finally started to move. We were given menus and only one minute later expected to order when we found ourselves at the fabled front of the queue facing a harassed looking server. Perhaps they cater exclusively to speed readers, because the menu was the most packed in and poorly laid out four pages that we’ve ever seen. Neither of us had read even half the menu, and we panic picked the first thing that sounded alright. We could see the flames around the server’s head begin to burn hotter and brighter as she struggled to find what Business Andy had ordered in the POS system. We had to point it out on the physical menu, at which time we found out that it wasn’t actually available, not just that day, but ever. Cross it out you numptys!

Business Andy was scanning for something new to order when he was accosted by the question, “are you vegan?” After answering no, the menu was literally snatched out of his hands by the server, who was completely engulfed in flames at this point, and cried shrilly “that’s the vegan menu!” While we appreciated that she was attempting to simplify what was a very stressful process, non-vegans are actually allowed to order vegan food. In fact we had just ordered two vegan meals right in front of her. The flames were licking at us, and we panic ordered a big breakfast without reading through what was in it.

The wait for the food wasn’t as long as you might have thought. The burger was plated up really nicely, with a blob of something like mayonnaise on top of it, and a smear of beetroot puree on the plate. If you thought there was something wrong with that sentence, there was. That stuff was meant to be in the burger. Do you expect us to dip the burger in the beetroot smear and then get blobbed in the nose by the mayo? Without the missing components, the jackfruit was flavourless, and the bun was extremely chewy.

The big breakfast was completely ruined by the presence of a bean and tomato chowder. Upon reflection, we believe this was meant to be the chef’s bourgeoise take on baked beans. Fail. Not only did this taste like a combination of tinned tomatoes and nothingness, but its juice had spread across the entire plate, infecting every other food item. This was a real shame as some of it looked pretty good, but that tomato juice was the kiss of death. At least we salvaged the bread before it could be defiled, and it quite nice, as were the cherry tomatoes which had been well roasted. We can see the chef was trying, but maybe he was trying too hard. Different is not always better.