Sunday, September 11, 2005

Zartowa, Elwood

Today, with the help of some local knowledge, we found ourselves brunching at Zartowa, 114 Ormond Road, Elwood, Tel +61 3 9531 1700. The hash browns are the best in town. Thick and mushy inside, crisp and golden outside, with just a hint of onion. Perfect.



I ordered the "Eggs Elwood", with toast, avocado, bacon and poached eggs, all topped with an excellent hollandaise. The eggs were a bit under-done, but the rest was great. Ditto the eggs benedict. They also did a good job with the porridge (served with coconut and brown sugar), fruit salad (served with toasted almonds), and extras (especially the sauteed spinach and Phillipa's honey wholewheat toast).

Other eye-catching items included the omelette, and a good-looking pancake stack with berry compote or maple syrup.

As a venue, it's a step above the average cafe, with white linen & paper tables inside, very good service (despite a slow start), and a street-front option for the dog crowd. Good coffee and tea, too.

16/20 "best hash"

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ate here today. No more homemade hash browns unfortunately. Which is a bit of a bummer because we travelled across town for the experience. Still a great breakkie, though.

22/6/08 12:06  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just went to Zartowa today and it was a terrible experience. There were kids serving the food, the kitchen was incredibly understaffed.

We had to wait an hour for the food to come to the table and the meals were subpar at best.

Not worth the money or the stress.

1/1/11 16:26  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don’t even bother with this place; it’s a rip off with rude management. I went to Zartowa café today after a morning supporting the triathlon, I figured there would be some delays being the day that was in it but it was a disaster.
I was with my 3 year old daughter and 2 friends. One of my friends ordered the cheese and tomato sandwich which was $9.50 We were a bit surprised at the price of this but figured it must be an exceptional sandwich to charge so much and therefore worth it. I ordered the chicken risotto $18 which is about average and my other friend ordered the pancakes. After 45 minutes we asked our waitress how much longer our order would be and she looked quiet surprised and commented that the table she had just brought food to had arrived 20 min after us but got served first so she went to check. Finally it arrived after a further 15 min and we were so disappointed, the cheese and tomato sandwich was pathetic, it was on burger bun bread with 2 slices of plain cheese and 2 slices of tomato – that’s it!! My risotto serve was so small I had to ask if there had been a mix up and had they given my an entre portion instead but I was told, no, they only had one size. I had the entire thing eaten in about 7 mouthfuls and was still really hungry. We presented this feed back to one of the waitress expecting her to get someone to come over to us but nothing, so we asked another waitress who said she’d get “the managers wife” When she came over we said how disappointed we were in the portion size of the risotto and she just replied that the was the size based on client demand (what ever kind of reply that is) as for the sandwich she said “well you’ve eaten it now so you have to pay for it”. I wasn’t going to mention the delay but as she was so unhelpful about the food I pointed this out to her, her response was “well we only have one chef on today” I was shocked that she didn’t even apologies for the delay or the poor value for money. I suggested that it would have been better if we had been warned when we ordered our food that there was an hour delay again no apology or response. Both my friends who live in Elwood said they were discussed and would never go back.

4/3/12 16:17  

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