Cute open-air cafe on a hill behind the Warburton Visitor Centre. A welcome sight for many of the cyclists making the 40km journey from Lilydale along the popular Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail bike path.
The cafe has a selection of small meals, but most people go here for the coffee and what I like to call the "Lycra ambience" -- one of those post-ride cafes where you look totally normal in your ridiculous cycling gear, clomping around in your clip-in shoes, simply because everyone else is too.
However, non-cyclists are welcome too. Warburton is a cute little town with green hills and bubbling creeks and rivers, well worth a visit from Melbourne, and there are plenty of tourists who make the journey.
I had the falafel wrap -- it's vegan as long as you ask for no tzaziki. It wasn't your usual grease-soaked kebab shop falafel wrap either -- it was very light and healthy-tasting, which I appreciated because I had just completed the Warburton Half Marathon, and stomachs in bodies that have just run 21.1k do not really appreciate grease. They also offer vegan cakes, which is awesome, although I didn't try one.
Service is the only thing that really needs to be improved. While most of the ladies working there were very nice, they seemed kinda generally confused about which orders needed to be delivered where. But my biggest complaint was that everything was SO SLOW. Our two small meals took close to 45 minutes to be delivered. I realize it's a sunny Sunday and therefore insanely busy, but I think they're crazy understaffed because there's no way our food should've taken that long to prepare. When you've just run 21k (or cycled 40k), you are generally ravenous and want your food within a reasonable (I.e., 20 minutes or less) timeframe. Maybe they should put more cooks on the weekend shift or something, I don't know.
Aside from the long unpleasant wait, this is a cute, reasonably healthy little cafe that I would definitely recommend.
For the cyclists, note there's a bike shed attached to the cafe if you need any repairs (or want to buy or rent a bike or any cycling gear). read more