Vue Lounge for Brunch

Vue Lounge
85 Merthyr Road, New Farm



My fear/annoyance/laziness re: driving has become debilitating. I'm thinking up more and more excuses to stay couped in Toowoomba rather than endure 2hrs to and from. However, last weekend there was one inavoidable reason to go home. One of my uni besties, Howl, was coming back to Brisbane from Cairns. There's not a lot that would make me journey home but catching up with an old mate is something I don't even have to think about.



Even then, I enticed my parents to come to pick me up from Toowoomba and I caught the coach back. Hehe. If you haven't met anyone who hates driving as much as me, neither have I.


We were planning to have breakfast on the Monday of the Queen's Birthday long weekend. I'm lucky enough to have a resource as good as Mochi at my disposal... she had a list of 'must visit' brunch places prepared and I just picked through the list for something that was open.

I originally wanted to go to Ponycat in New Farm but it was packed full full FULL to the point where the waiters didn't even bother pretending we could possibly, maybe get a table. We drifted around a bit outside and finally, I whipped out Urbanspoon on my iPhone (this sounds like a media plug, but it isn't) and discovered that Vue was also in New Farm and also had good ratings.

This time I called in advance to see if we could table. As an improvement from Ponycat, the guy who answered the phone admitted they were 'very busy' but implied that we could get seated after 15min or so.


He turned out to be right on the money. We stood in line for around 15min before we were plonked down on one of the outside tables. The folks who wanted a table after us weren't so lucky - the line grew and grew and grew. Quite remarkable since Vue is quite a large cafe with a multitude of indoor/outdoor seating.

Thus the waiting game was started. We waited another 10min before getting our menus. I took that opportunity to announce my coffee order. I knew the food would take forever to arrive (doesn't bother me when the purpose of my meal is to chat/catch up) but I wanted my coffee to get under works so it could tide me over.

Latte

No such luck. It took another 15-20min for someone to take our order and by then, I thought they'd forgotten about my coffee. It arrived 5min later and I grudgingly admit it was good, perhaps even worth the wait.

Food came maybe 20min after that. It might sound like I'm exaggerating but let's just say that we went out with the intent of having breakfast and by the time we got our food, it was way into lunch time.

Breakfast burrito - with bacon, eggs, onion, mushrooms, cheese and tomato relish

Howl had ordered what I wanted to get - the breakfast burrito. I got to try a bit and it was pretty good.

Inside of breakfast burrito

Mushrooms, bacon, egg... everything you want at breakfast time, really, but wrapped in a convenient shape. I liked the tomato salsa too. He got it with an extra side of haloumi.

Croissant - with scrambled eggs, bacon and chives

I didn't get the breakfast burrito because that's the sacrifice we must make as food bloggers. I have to order something different so that there's more photos and more to write about. I got the bacon and scrambled eggs on croissant. Yum! Loved the scrambled eggs. They were soft, buttery, sweet and just win. The bacon was a bit under for me but I like my bacon to be like bacon jerky.

Banana bread - with lemon creme

I was toying between ordering sweet/savory so to keep myself satisfied, I ordered a banana bread too. It came with lemon curd. Howl commented that the lemon was way too sour for him. I actually thought it was a necessary accompaniment to the banana bread.

Banana bread texture shot

Unfortunately, that was the case because the banana bread on its own was tough and dry. I could make better banana bread than that with my eyes closed. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating but in any case, I'm not going to try because banana's bout as dear as gold these days. Maybe that's why this banana bread was so shocking - it was stored from last year???

I didn't know whether to vote 'like' or 'dislike' on Urbanspoon. The savory food wasn't terribly creative but it was good. The service was friendly but it was slow... can't blame them for being busy but can't say I enjoy waiting. I had a good time overall but that might just be because of the situation. I put 'like' because I'm nice but I've had better breakfast experiences. Oh... I will say this though: someone in the table next to me ordered bircher muesli and it looked FABULOUS. OH and I left my iPhone behind on my table and my neighbor diner was nice enough to chase me down. Probably unrelated to Vue but it makes me feel good about eating there :).