Castaway Coffee Bar — Restaurant in Gold Coast City

Castaway café needs to work out if it is a breakfast café or a coffee shop.

If you want to dine in, you have two options for payment *Download and log into the Me&You App and order from the online menu at the table *Pay by cash or card and not download the app, but you then need to leave the table and go back and order at the counter.

This is where the fun begins, there is no table service for taking cash or card (non app) orders, so you end up in the long queue of people who are either also paying cash or card who don’t want to download the app and are dining in, along with those who are just ordering coffee or take-away breakfast, of which there were a lot of people just ordering coffee to get their morning hit.

The young lady taking orders when we dined for breakfast, really struggled with English, we are a patient lot here in Australia and are admirable and welcoming of those who come to our country to work, especially in hospitality, but it’s not fair of the management (to staff or patrons) to put someone at the front of house to take orders that are not (trained) experienced to cope with the morning rush.

We finally placed our orders and ventured back to our table, the coffees arrived promptly and was fine.

After about 10-15 minutes, a man who we presumed to be the owner (Kiwi) came over and asked us to reconfirm our orders, which we did, so it seemed that somehow our order never got to the kitchen.

Now we come to the food, one intriguing aspect of The Castaway Café menu was, the “Brekky Stack” which is the most expensive breakfast item at $27 only offers you “one egg” and this is their version of the traditional “Big Breakfast” now we are talking beachside location here, where there are lots of hungry people swimming before breakfast and the big breakfast option only includes one egg, come on guys, that is not good value for money. You can add eggs a side, no option for only one egg, but two will set you back another $5 bringing your Brekky Stack” to $32 which is expensive.

I ordered the Benny Baby which is their version of eggs benedict with what is described as a “House Made” hollandaise sauce.

Hollandaise sauce is not easy to make and hats off to café’s who do not opt for the commercially bought version, so if it’s on offer, I am all in for the egg’s benny most times.

We all received our meals, all generous serves, although the eggs benny were served on Turkish bread rather than an English muffin, but hey, no drama, it was a generous serve, however, the hollandaise sauce tasted more like a sticky sweet mayonnaise which had no characteristics of a proper hollandaise sauce.

Hollandaise sauce is meant to be a rich, buttery sauce, freshened with the lightest touch of lemon to add some acidity to the meal and cut through the richness of the poached eggs.

Unfortunately, the chef / cook decided to pour a generous amount of this Hollandaise sauce imposter all over the bacon and eggs and ruined the entire breakfast making it inedible.

Adding insult to injury I added a chorizo sausage as a side which was also inedible as it was incredibly salty.

At the conclusion, when our plates (mine 90% uneaten) were taken, the waitress did not even question “were our meals ok” or, seeing mine uneaten, asking for some feedback by asking if there was an issue.

The café is located opposite the Gold Coast beach, the staff where friendly but they need to pick up their act in regard to service of in-house customers who are having breakfast, perhaps a separate queue for the take-away side of the business would be a better option.

Summary, expensive for breakfast, lots of other options if you walk another five minutes, would not be our first choice if returning.

Feedback to manager, if someone leaves most of their breakfast, take the trouble to ask for feedback and perhaps also get a recipe for proper Hollandaise sauce, not the mayonnaise you...

Food is standard cafe food, but given the location, I feel they could easily have kept the price of regular items a bit lower than they've set them, with a croissant or toastie setting you back $9.80. Yet a full breakfast is less than double that. It specifically targets the more popular food options for a bit of skimming. Again with the amount of business and the location, they could easily afford to lower these prices, and still turn profit. Better still evenly distribute the costs over all menu items to make it more fair to people who just want a snack.

Coffee beans are nothing special, a bit weak and watery for black coffee drinkers, and unfortunately the view of sunrise is not what I imagined because despite the 15 minute parking rule, a van sat there for almost an hour, after which I just saw trees and a sun that was already up in the sky. So I gave this place a good go for everything I expected from it, unfortunately the environment let them down in this instance.

Lastly there's not a single point for charging a laptop or phone, which is quintessential these days in the cafe industry so you lost my business on my study days too.

In conclusion the cafe is good, but only in so far as it compares to other cafes. Given the amazing location, high business traffic, and strict council regulations, this place should be amazing, not just good. The team are ready to be the workers of an amazing place, but the resources and infrastructure just aren't there yet. A few phone calls to council about trimming some trees for the view, less blatant money grubbing, and a bit of consideration towards the importance of charging and wifi, and this place could be up there as one of the best cafes in the world. Especially given it's as close as you can get to legally being at the beach front in Queensland without travelling...

What a shame, for such an ideal location, the 3 staff members we spoke to were rude and uninterested and the food was 50/50.

We asked someone to clean our dirty table, she cleaned it quickly and table still had food crumbs left behind.

We ordered coffees and it took 16 mins to come, and that is after we checked up on it. The waitress came over and said it’s only been 10 mins, however we showed her the time stamp as we ordered via our phones. Saw the coffee was made and the barista rang her bell. The male waiter was standing a meter away talking to another waiter as the coffee sat there getting cold. The barista rang the bell again and gave it to the waiter to finally deliver to our table. When he arrived, he doesn’t say a word, doesn’t smile and plops the cup down and walks away. Clearly, he doesn’t want to be there. Extremely unfriendly service.

We also ordered food. The chicken Parma was pounded so thin, less than .05cm in thickness and was covered in a thick layer of cakey breadcrumbs. It came out superbly burnt and the fries were limp and sad.

Definitely disappointed as looking forward to tasting some crunchy, hot fries.

The salmon dish looked beautiful. Fish was bland although balanced with an extreme saltiness from the skin which was smothered in salt. The side veggies were nice on this dish.

Partner couldn’t eat his parmi so he had most of my salmon.

Portions for both dishes were on the small side with the manager telling us all meals are small here.

Overall, supremely disappointed with the service and lack of care and pride in delivering a hospitable experience. Especially as our first meal back here on our annual...