Well, first things first. I wanted SO MUCH to not only like
this place but to love it. The whole presentation is great, and reminiscent of
it’s ‘parent’, The Public Inn.
We went there many months ago when it first
opened and we thought it was a brilliant idea to open a mini-me version of
Public Inn. A more casual, user friendly version, or so we erroneously thought!
It’s worse! All the things I dislike about Public Inn are even more so at Café re-Public.
The menu is SO fussy and pretentious! What’s wrong with having poached eggs and
bacon on a breakfast menu? Sure, put your own take on it, but not if that take
is some weird ‘baconaise’, which to this day I still do not understand exactly
what that is. We went there three or four times in the spirit of good community
mindedness and then we lost interest in them. But recently we noticed that they
have a new winter menu so we thought we’d give them one last go for lunch. It
all started out the same, we walk in to the lovely surrounds and are greeted by
the friendly barista, all bodes well as we take our seats. We are given the
lunch menu as well as their ‘all day menu’ and our order for soy lattes are
taken. However, by the time the coffees arrive, (the smallest coffees I have
ever met), the dream is over. Try hard, overly complicated menu with all the
kinds of things that I do not want for brunch. I settled on a fairly straight
forward omelet, which was so watery that my sour dough toast became soggy. I’m
not sure how to make a watery omelet by they managed to do it. My daughter had the
salmon gravalax bagel that came with a poached egg which was gelatinous and
virtually raw. The waitress seemed irritated by us asking to have it replaced
with one that wasn’t raw. She gave us some garbled explanation that none of us
could follow, about why they can’t make poached eggs anymore. Which confused us
because it’s on their menu, not some other menu that we made up. Anyway the offending egg
was simply removed and we pressed on. To her credit when it came time to pay
the waitress did offer a complimentary cookie to my daughter, who didn’t take
her up on the offer, but charged full price. So just like The Public Inn
we left feeling still hungry but with a sting in our pocket. And I feel
confident to say we won’t concern ourselves with re-Public again.
Is it a Great Eat? No!
Café re-PUBLIC
26 Templeton St,
Castlemaine VIC 3450, Australia
(03) 5472 1582
www.re-public.com.au
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