It goes without saying that if you’re going to put a particular meal/dish/cuisine in your restaurant’s name, then you had better excel at said item. With this in mind, we thought what better way could there be to start our day than at Bread & Breakfast?
This eatery (which stays open throughout the day and also serves lunch and dinner) occupies what was once a bank at the junction of Caine Road, Castle Road and Peel Street. Modestly stylish on the outside, the interior is of a blandness usually only reserved for service station Little Chefs, garishly incongruous orange-coloured chandeliers being the only memorable sight in an otherwise facilely imagined maroon and white space. B&B also has a takeaway coffee/cake counter, and an outdoor area that would surely be a pleasant spot to sit were it looking on to greenery or a body of water rather than traffic-blighted Caine Road and its incessant thunder of diesel-spewing buses.
To the food: for a place that supposedly specialises in the most important meal of the day, the menu was disappointingly short on options. Almost by default, we opted for the English ($98) and American ($108) sets. Both came with two eggs any style, toast, grilled tomato, bacon, ham, sausage, hash brown, orange juice, and tea or coffee, the only point of differentiation being the baked beans (English) and waffle with maple syrup (American).
Both were exercises in mediocrity, the bacon being of the budget supermarket variety, the hash browns struggling to emulate the standard set by the McDonald’s a couple of doors down, and the sausages (pork or beef, we asked to blank looks and shrugs) being as bland as the décor. The baked beans were posted AWOL, while the “maple syrup” adorning the insipid waffle tasted suspiciously like chocolate sauce. Indeed, we were left pining for the fare at the aforementioned Little Chef – no mean feat.
Considering the variety of similarly price-pointed but vastly superior breakfasts on offer in the immediate vicinity, you have to wonder how long this spot can survive. David Cooper
Shop A, B & C, G/F, Caine Mansion, 80-88 Caine Rd, Central, 2548 0330. Daily 9am-10pm. Breakfast around $100.