Parnells Cafe and Gallery – http://www.parnellscafeandgallery.co.nz

Reviewed by Fi Fi – July 2014

The Place:

This place is smack bang in the middle of the main drag through “Vegas”.   There is an abundance of counter food or a varied menu to choose from. There are vegetarian options and gluten free options, Although not a separated kiddies menu you have a lot of child friendly options to choose from.  The coffee is Mojo so where could you possibly go wrong?  You can sit inside and it has a relaxing but funky charm about it.  Once a garden centre it has now been proudly established as a cafe and gallery.

The Service:

The service was okay, but not really impressive.

The presentation:

The dish looked okay…..  Perhaps a tad overkill with the amount of parsley spread over the plate?  And with the swirl of balsamic and olive oil it made the dish look rather over saturated in ‘oily’ stuff like they were just trying a wee bit too hard to look trendy.

• The Benedict – good.  Good, but not great.
• The bacon – was okay
• The sausage – was scrummy.
• The bread – was okay but nothing to get all giddy about.
• The eggs – were runny and warm.
• The hollandaise – was straight out of the bottle or if it wasn’t it kinda looked and tasted like it was.

Would we go again?

For the coffee, not sold on the Bene.

Scorecard:

Style: Classic 6/10.  More points for the fact that they used real salmon steaks.

Taste: 6/10.  Good, but not great.

Originality: 5/10 – It’s the pretty standard selection of either Salmon, Bacon or Vege which I can only assume means Spinach.

Value: 5/10 The three options are the Vege which is $16.50, the Benedict which is $17.50, or the Montreal which is a staggering $19.50! This Montreal is probably the most expensive I have seen in our entire country so far!  Pretty expensive really.  The only saving glory here is that the sides are quite reasonable i.e. 2 hash browns will set you back $3.50.  The dearest sides were either mushiness or bacon at $4.50 a pop.

Eggs: (how good they were): 6/10. They were runny and warmish.

Overall score: 6/10

349 Victoria Avenue, Whanganui