The Oaks Cafe, Surrey Hills by Bureaucrat

Continuing with our adventures in finding cafes that are child-friendly, I decided to get creative.  I'm aware of a few cafe-with-garden establishments (Cafe Vue at Heide, Warran Glen Garden Centre & Cafe and also the Collingwood Children's Farm) but they're just a tad too far for us nowadays, since Boy Chick dislikes sitting in the car for too long.  A bit of Googling came up with cafes in nurseries and a promising nearby option was The Oaks Cafe in Surrey Hills.

Lasagne

The Oaks Cafe is located within Acorn Nursery.  The nursery is quite beautiful - there are gorgeous floral scents wafting in the breeze, bees are buzzing around, and there's the melodic squawks of happy birds.  

In addition to the cafe, the nursery also has a gift shop (with homewares, clothing, jewellery and knick knacks) and a cute playground for little ones.

I read online that the cafe serves fairly decent food and that it's best to snag a table on the veranda (as the inside of the cafe can be quite loud and echo, echo, echo-y).  It's an order-at-the-front sort of cafe.  There's quite a long list of dishes on offer.  We only ordered off the ready-to-eat menu (sandwiches, quiches, pies, etc) as we only realised that there was an a la carte menu after we had finished.  Nonetheless we were quite happy with the food.

The food is simple and tasty and just well-made.  There's a home-style cooking feel to it.  The Lawyer chose the beef lasagne (see first pic).  He was quite pleased with it.  I had a taste and agreed with him that the beef bolognese was deep in flavour and was a good amount of creamy bechamel sauce.

I went for the tuna patty.  This was a hefty patty - it was well made with a golden crisp crust.  Moist, flavoursome and filling.  It came with a salad, tartare sauce and a big wedge of lemon.

The Lawyer also had a coffee.  We also got a slice of banana bread for Boy Chick (sorry no pic!).  I'm usually quite cynical of buying banana bread - we all know the establishment is just using up over-ripe bananas.  But this was quite a delicious banana bread.  It was moist, flavoursome and it didn't feel stodgy or bready.  It wasn't overly sweet, which got a big tick from me.  It was served toasted with a choice of butter or lemon curd.  Boy Chick ate his banana bread in the fenced-in playground. 

Verdict

We really liked it.

Mid value.

Overall

There are many things to like about the Oaks Cafe.  The food is pretty tasty and you can't beat the colourful surroundings.  We'd definitely go back and next time we'll try the a la carte menu.

Find it at

The Oaks Cafe
673 Canterbury Road
Surrey Hills VIC 3127
Phone: (03) 9890 3162