Beyond Coffee

Rating: 2

We ate lunch here in May 2022.

Fish tacos with salad
Fried mushrooms on toast
Passionfruit and orange smoothie

We were surprised to see a clientele of 80%+ grey tops when we walked in, but don’t let that paint a picture of one of those old lady cafes with the pie warmers and red plastic trays. The cabinet was actually quite interesting, although we elected to order off the menu.

The fish tacos were the weaker offering, the fish itself was just frozen hoki sticks, and while they had toasted the tacos and the chipotle mayo was pretty good, this dish was dragged down by its salad. The side salad was completely undressed, not even a dash of the most basic vinagrette. That’s bad enough until you realise that the salad was an add-on to the tacos and cost an additional $3.50. How very dare you!? An undressed salad is a crime, and being charged for it as a separate item is cause for the reintroduction of capital punishment. Seriously, fuck you, $3.50 for that? Not two blocks over, Empire Sports and Garden Bar Restaurant blows this place out of the water on value for money.

The mushrooms on toast were actually pretty good. We opted for fried over creamy and were not disappointed. The mushrooms were nicely garlicky, and came with two good thick slices of toast that had been slightly overdone but were still delicious. Extra points that the little butter packets were soft enough to spread, not the usual rock hard straight from the fridge ordeal.

The smoothie really should have been a juice. The flavours were weird, and the addition of orange juice meant that it kept separating into a foam layer and a juice layer. Not cool.