Graceful

Grace Cafe

138 Hinemoa Street

Birkenhead

Recently, we managed to make it to Grace Cafe. We went searching for this place ages ago, but it's so close to another good cafe (Villa is about 5 steps away) that we never made it there to eat. And now we have.

We arrived around 11.30am. I was a bit weary when I walked in - they were playing drum'n'bass. Why, oh why would you choose to play drum'n'bass in a cafe? Evil, dark, grimey, 180bpm, picking-carrots-at-Fu-Bar-at-2-in-the-morning drum'n'bass. Of all the genres that exist on the planet, of all the amazing music to pick, you pick one of the most annoying genres. Attention cafes: playing drum'n'bass does not make you very inviting, it doesn't prove that you're "urban" and it won't convince the kids that you're down with them.

Admittedly, it was a pretty vanilla drum'n'bass track, one of Shapeshifter's more downbeat-upbeat chilled vibed-out joints. But drum'n'bass is drum'n'bass, and it does not belong anywhere near any cafe I attend for breakfast. There is nothing worse than an incessant onslaught of shrill hi-hats and bad synth noises beating your head into your morning coffee. I tried to ignore it, to give them a fair chance and not dismiss them based on a my own musical bias.

And then, as if by magical telepathy, the drum'n'bass stopped. And some mid-tempo obscure indie music started. Not good enough for me to ask after, but good enough to go nicely in the background. Thank goodness.

The menu covered all the bases, and the girl behind the counter waited patiently while I ummed and ahhed over the eggs bene or the mushrooms or the fritters, etc. In the end, I ordered the roasted portabello mushrooms with lemon sauce on sour dough (from memory), an eggs bene for the male half of EB, two lattes and a mango smoothie for me. The girl seemed to struggle a little bit typing it all into the till, and I'm almost positive she missed something, because all of that came to $32. Pretty reasonably priced if that is right.

Now, the banana smoothie. We all remember this smoothie vessel disaster. I desperately hoped I wasn't going to encounter something similar here. And again, I wasn't disappointed. The smoothie arrived in a tall glass, with one black straw. Delicious and not too thick. Thumbs up from me.

The coffee arrived soon after, hot and well made. Things were going well, until the waitress brought our plates over and said "Here you go, guys". If you're not familiar with the dislike of the collective pronoun "guys", check out this rant here.

Moving on very quickly from that bone of contention, the food was great. My mushrooms were phenomenal, and the lemon sauce was not as rich as I thought it would be (good thing). The eggs were cooked well in the bene, and the hollandaise was freshly made in the cafe that day. House made hollandaise ALWAYS makes a difference. Cafes who don't make their own hollandaise are so weird. Why don't you do it? Is it too hard for you? Did you skip that day of chef school? That's a textbook cafe essential.

The service wasn't exactly attentive, but we were quite low maintenance that day. The waitresses in the cafe were friendly and approachable, & the cafe itself was exactly the same.

Hit. This cafe is great - good food, great coffee and extremely well priced. As long as they avoid calling large groups of people "guys" and steer clear of drum'n'bass before 3pm, they've got a bright future.

Reviewed by B.