Not really sure this place deserves a review, but there aren't many recommendations for this area, so here goes.
Papamoa lacks a choice of cafe-style establishments serving breakfast or brunch - prime business opportunity for someone!!!! Rather than resort to a McCafe we braved the Robert Harris chain. As soulless and devoid of personality as all the others, the sole drawcard here was an ok coffee & a sit-down breakfast menu.
The Vegetarian Stack sounded promising: tomatoes, spinach, grilled mushrooms, hash browns & a poached egg served on "speciality bread" with pesto hollandaise. We swapped out poached for scrambled eggs; the texture of which resembled the pesto "hollandaise", which was tasty but visually unappealing - green goop with big chunks of vegetation. A few leaves of baby spinach chucked on the plate contributed the rest of the greens. The "speciality bread", apparently served pan fried (???) was soggy, run-of-the-mill focaccia-style flatbread. And my new pet gripe: this place is another one that advertises "mushrooms" then presents you with one lonely, sad, friendless, small mushroom. Are mushrooms really that much of a luxury item?!
The pancakes with fruit & maple syrup were more like pikelets, and the fruit was pretty average. Coffees were also average. Cabinet food looked ok, but considering the cabinet was full to the brim at 10am, who knows how long some of those frittatas & cakes had been on display??
At $65 for 3 of us, it was a pretty underwhelming start to the day.
The only reason I would ever return here is if we had no other choice - and my first option would be to drive to the Mount to hunt out a decent breakfast instead. read more
