Maranui Cafe

Rating: 4

We ate breakfast here in January 2024.

Snickers shake
Mocha shake
Potato, brocollini, chorizo, egg, spinach, harissa and hummus bowl
Bagel with halloumi, tomato and pesto

Located upstairs at the surf lifesaving club, Maranui Cafe has got a pretty good thing going. They are always absolutely heaving with punters but they really know how to mow through a service and the tables turn over very fast. So while the queue going all the way down the stairs and sometimes out onto the street can be alarming at first, it moves at a fair clip.

And there’s a reason that queue forms, the food is pretty damn good. The shakes were outstanding. So thick, so cold, so big, so ice creamy, big fat straw and no bollocks unwelcome swirl of cream on the top. Heaps of appealing flavours too. Perfection.

The bagel was also top tier. The tomato, often quite unwelcome in a bagel in our opinion, was a standout. Maranui Cafe had done some kind of slow roasting balsamic wizardry, and they were so flavourful that they elevated the dish to a whole new level of deliciousness. Annoyingly they had put all the toppings on the bottom half of the bagel, then capped it with the top half on a jaunty angle. It wasn’t suitable for eating as one piece like a burger, so of course you flip the top half off and enjoy the bottom half. Unfortunately this leaves you with a dry topping less half bagel to contend with.

The bowl was pretty good. We appreciate when a cafe offers something different to the standard breakfast options that we’ve all seen and yawned at a thousand times. Seriously, are we not all tired of eggs Benedict and pancakes yet? There’s just no reason why we can’t have potatoes, sausages, and hummus for breakfast anyway. It’s the 21st century, after all, and as a society, it’s time to step outside of the plain grey box that so many breakfasts fit inside.

Maranui Cafe doesn’t take reservations. Be prepared to queue during busy times which is a lot of the time.