It's generally a good sign when you arrive to a cafe in another city and there's a line out the door of punters waiting for their morning take-away. Well, at least, that's the interpretation we took arriving to this Grafton local as we attempted to find breakfast that didn't involve the Golden Arches and layers of regret for the remainder of our drive.
Searching 'coffee' in Grafton on Yelp led me to two places, Toast being one of them. The space is what I'm going to call regional-chic with dashes of vintage inspiration (the wall of 50s Tupperware and a few Danish retro pieces specifically). It is counter service and there's a 50cent EFTPOS surcharge for purchases under $100. This baffled me.
The menu delivers standard cafe breakfast options -- toast with condiments, eggs and bacon, corn fritters and omelets. I opted for the omelette with tomato, Bangalow ham, spinach and mushrooms. Our coffees (Botero) arrived and the blend is strong. It actually cuts through the milk making a flat white worth waiting 5hours for. My omelette, is a lot bigger than I expected and looks home-made. It's a comfort to see and even more soul-warming to eat. It did lack seasoning in the egg itself and would have been standout if there was a little tarragon, sage, garlic or basil. Still, for a cafe we took a punt on it could have been worse.
So to Toast, I "toast" you for giving us a road trip breakfast worth paying for, and that hasn't resulted in any road trip regret. read more