Queen Street Cafe, Croydon, South Australia by Big Fil

Pound for pound, the short section of Elizabeth Street near the Croydon train station would have to be the best area for brunch in Adelaide. And pick of the places so far has been the Queen Street Café.


In a lot of ways this café feels like it shouldn’t be in Adelaide. Colourful mural on the wall, a big communal table, located in an old, recently working class part of town, it feels much more like it should be in a recently gentrified part of Melbourne. It’s very different to the typical drab Adelaide suburban café, not in a hipster or industrial way but with warm colours and a bit of a funky edge to make it attractive and welcoming.


With only a few other diners on a mid-week morning, Queen Street Café was a quiet and comfortable place to eat. I don’t expect that to be the case on the weekends though, and I suspect a weekend sleep-in would make it hard to get a table.


The breakfasts are both similar to but a bit different to the normal café fare around town. For example, the scrambled eggs on toast with mushrooms comes with rocket and on ciabatta bread (I think). With very good fluffy eggs just how I like them, good earthy flavours from the mushrooms and a bit of a kick from the rocket, simple but very well executed and generous in size.


I'm not normally a big breakfast sort of person but I thought my poached eggs with chorizo and tomato compote was excellent. The eggs seconds from being undercooked, so that piercing the yolk resulted in a flood of golden goodness. The rich sweetness of the compote and the slight spiciness of the chorizo matched very well, and again a generous serving.



I don’t always go for my usual breakfast dessert when in Adelaide but the quality of the breakfasts lured me into a slice of apple tarty goodness. Good flavoursome apple but the highlight was the great pastry.


Overall
One of the things that stood out about this café was that it appealed to be both me and my mum. Different enough to be interesting for me, familiar enough to be comfortable for her, you’ve got to be good to stand out in this little strand of shops and it does with its high quality café breakfast fare. Just a couple of things which would improve the experience, it’s not clear whether it is table or counter service and we were left hanging a bit too long near the counter by staff while we were trying to work it out. And given that it was a weekday morning the food did seem to come out a little slowly, leaving me wondering what it might be like on a weekend. However other than that staff were friendly and professional and its somewhere I’ve recommended to Hungry Pete as worth the 30 minutes drive to try.

Verdict
Food – 8.5
Ambience – 8
Service – 7
Price – 7.5

Address
12 Elizabeth Street
Croydon SA 5008
Tel: (08) 8340 0708