Friendly and personal service.
The coffee is, as expected, quite fine.
The food is interesting. I think there is a fine line between making different ingredients work, and throwing together things that should not be there for the novelty factor only to fail miserably. I remember a Ploughman's lunch in Surry Hills whose individual ingredients were high quality but which left me with an overwhelming taste of sourness and salt.
The food at the Trail does nothing of the sort. It is as if every ingredient is calculated to work together with the rest, in the right proportion, to deliver something that works better as a whole than by eating the individual ingredients in succession. The premium is absolutely justified. My fears, based on seeing terms like "silver beets" liberally showered all over the menu, were not.
Sorry Grumpy but I think I have a new Vaucluse hangout. read more