The Hardware Store Cafe and Eatery has been on my list of places to visit for some time, and I recently heard good things from some friends so decided to head there for the first breakfast of the recent WA long weekend.
The cafe is open from 6:30am daily, and we arrived just after 7:30am. Seeing the huge queue that extended outside the small patisserie next door we expected the cafe to be full, but it wasn’t.
There was a very relaxed feeling inside, and it seemed to be full of locals rather than hordes of nomadic foodies.
Coffee to start, and the first thing I tasted was BURNT. Ugh. Not what I need early on a Saturday morning.
Here’s the food menu, with a good variety and a few interesting choices. The menus were located inside the tables (under the glass) which was a neat idea, no hunting around for menus here.
I chose the “Toolbox” ($24) with scrambled eggs, bacon, beef sausage, cherry tomatoes, hash browns, mushrooms and toast. It’s been a while since I’ve ordered a full breakfast like this, and unfortunately this one was a disappointment.
The scrambled eggs had a good texture, but were completely unseasoned. The bread was like a rock, and came with no butter (I had to steal some from Renay’s breakfast) – it was almost impossible to cut. The sausages were quite nice, there was a decent serving of bacon, hash browns were okay but out of a bag…meh. Not worth $24.
Renay chose the “winter berry” (count them) pancakes with honeycomb butter and dulce de leche caramel ($21) which looked fantastic, but was another disappointment. The pancakes were quite chewy and not very sweet, which wouldn’t have been a problem if the caramel was sweet, but it didn’t taste of much at all.
Maybe we caught the Hardware Store on a bad day, but we were both disappointed. The coffee was terrible, the food ordinary and it was one of the most expensive breakfasts we’ve had in recent times. It’s certainly a relaxed place to eat, but I think this is one for the locals who can see past the faults.
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