Bang & Grind, The Esplanade — Restaurant in Cairns City

A lovely little alfresco café.

The staff were beautiful and and extremely polite on our arrival. We were seated immediately and offered water which was as nice.

The presentation of the venue was very clean, tidy and well organised. The background music was appropriate and at a volume that you could appreciate it but also manage conversation without having to speak over it.

The loose leaf tea was served at a fantastic temperature and we didn't have to wait long for it to cool.

The food was delicious and was presented extremely well. The speed of service was impressive.

The only drawback was that the meals were of average size. I ordered the Buddha Bowel with a side of Chicken. The bowel was more like a leafy salad with very little filling and the side of chicken was maybe 160g which left me wondering what my $25 went towards.

The Ruben sandwich that my partner and I shared was a reasonable value at $17.

My partner has a Acai Bowl. It looked lovely and from what I was told was delicious. But again, the serving size for the price is questionable.

When we paid we commented to the staff on the piece in comparison to the portion sizes and she was overly dismissive and offered no concern as it is was not important.

Overall the experience was very positive but the value for money just is not there. That is why I have given Little Loco 3 stars.

If they increased the serving size to match other venues in the area I think this would go a long way.

Thank you for a...

Worst smoothie bowl I’ve ever had !

I came here yesterday because of the good reviews, but I ended up being really disappointed.

The smoothie bowls are quite expensive ($14,90 without extras) so I thought they have to be good.

Well the base so the smoothie the most important part of a smoothie bowl (obviously) was so runny that it felt more like I was eating a soup.

Also the dragonfruit bowl was supposed to be with pineapple and mango. I agree frozen mango has not the strongest taste but pineapple definitely does. I couldn’t taste any of it.

I’m usually not really critical when it comes to food. But this is not a smoothie bowl.

I’m working in a café and I’m preparing smoothie bowls all day long and I can tell they are not supposed to be that runny.

The toppings weren’t not great either. I mean like 3 pieces of kiwi and 5 chunks of banana ?? This is not what I understand as “seasonal fruits”. It’s just a little bit of banana and kiwi...

Also the granola looked and tasted like it was just the last few bits of an almost empty muesli box. It was basically just crumbs.

The one star of the review goes to the almond latte that I had which was good though.

I would definitely not order a smoothie bowl...

2 eggs Benny, 1 juice and a kids pancakes. Over $100 when you make the mistake of staying in Cairns on a public holiday (20% surcharge) when most other places are closed or similarly surcharging/mugging. If staff are getting 2.5x pay (as per law) then I expect them to do their job properly given they're getting $50+ an hour probably. The food was absolutely rubbish, weird tasting bacon, zero flavour hollandaise, eggs + spinach. The hollandaise was a weird yellow colour with bubbles, not creamy. Luckily the portion was tiny. Juice wasn't cold pressed, get a proper juicer. Half our order went to the table next door thanks to the half-comatose waitress and only for my observation our neighbour would have tucked in. Message to staff & management: if I'm paying $100 for breakfast it had better be top notch and worth $100. Pull your pants up, pay attention to your customers and start serving decent food or you'll contribute to the ever flattened...