Forages Deli Cafe — Restaurant in Brisbane City

This is a sweet little café conveniently located in the Fiveways shopping centre at the intersection of Swann, Indooroopilly and Gaily Roads in Taringa. Also in the centre are a Crust Pizza Parlour, a bakery, a pharmacy, a convenience store, a few other shops and a rather congested parking area at the front.

The owners and the staff are super helpful, polite and efficient and add to that a friendly and bright ambience, decent food and drink, at what by today's standards are actually quite modest prices, and you have all the ingredients for a pleasant brekky, lunch or brunch.

My wife and I had a Mother’s Day breakfast here, and no surprise that the place was busy but we were still able to get a small table tucked into the corner at the window. There’s indoor and outdoor seating, but being a balmy autumn morning most patrons seemed to prefer sitting outside.

We ordered an avocado toast, two slices of toast with honey, a coffee and a milkshake. After my 25% “Entertainment” discount, the bill came to a reasonable 28 pesos, not bad value as Australia races towards the hyperinflation cliff and the prices skyrocket from one week to another. And the offerings were all generous sizes and neatly presented to the table on neat white crockery.

But what really impressed me about this place was how efficient the service was, despite it being nearly full. From my observation, there were ample staff members on duty to cope with the crowds, which is unusual these days where most places are understaffed. And they were all neatly turned out and professional in their attitude. Clearly, these guys know what they’re doing and they didn’t miss a beat. The drill is that you order at the counter and will be given a number to plonk on your table. Within a few minutes of ordering, drinks and food were on the table. Coming hard on the heels of an unpleasant experience that we had at an Italian restaurant in Paddington the night before where we waited an hour and a half for meals, having such smart, quick service made a happy change. I guess not being weighed down by having to deal with an endless stream of home delivery and take-away orders, also helps.

Toilets are a bit of a challenge. You need to grab a key from the staff and head out of the restaurant, to the back of the centre. There you will find two fairly basic toilets, of the type that you might see on a construction site: one male and one female. The male one was reasonably clean and provisioned with soap, but the ancient 1980s style hand dryer is well in need of a replacement. It’s interesting to see that this centre has recently been sold, so hopefully an upgrade to the facilities and the parking is on the cards.

The only thing that we definitely didn't like about F.C., was the little article pinned to the front window promoting a “Yes” vote in the upcoming “Voice” referendum. Taking sides on such a divisive issue is bound to offend...

Dropped in on Saturday just gone for lunch and a coffee, the coffee was good and came out quickly. We had around 45 mins before we had to leave, from order to delivery to the table was around 35-40 mins, we ordered soup which was premade and a turkey sandwich, it was not busy at this time and the staff were more interested in cleaning up then getting our food, I noticed the soup ready under the warmer lights, it sat there for 10mins before it was reheated and sent to our table. Staff were nice, food was tasty but we had to scoff it down due to the time constraints....

Beautiful coffee. Nice muffin. Reasonable parking. Reasonable menu/offerings. Friendly staff. Had to wait for my coffee, which is ok. Not ok? Having to Wait for the regulars' order to be made. who came in/ ordered after me, but they made hers before mine. I know she ordered after me, because she came in, chatted,& placed& paid for her order. So not a phone order that had come in earlier. I like being a regular as much as the next person. But it shouldn't mean you ignore other customers. Because guess how regulars start? Customers who...