East End Hub — Restaurant in Newcastle-Maitland

Chose East End Hub to meet a friend for brunch. It’s Sunday and I expected it would be busy, so was happy to wait to be seated. I chose an outdoor table with partial shade. Someone had spilt a coffee on the floor right near our seats; I asked for some paper towel to soak up the spillage. No assistance was offered and no paper towel/napkins were provided. The staff just stepped over and around the spillage next to us. Coffee was ordered and served without a problem. The waitress returned to take our food order. My friend ordered the Big Breakfast and asked for spinach in lieu of the chorizo. She was informed that there would be an additional charge for the spinach. She decided to forego both chorizo and spinach. I ordered the poached eggs with chilli jam on the side. I requested my eggs be poached to medium, only to be informed that the kitchen doesn’t cook eggs to medium; choice is limited to soft poached or hard poached eggs. However, the waitress went back to the kitchen to confirm. Another waitress came out to confirm that the chef aims to poach eggs to medium and that she would check back with me once served. When asked if the other waitress had put our order through, we said we thought she had. We waited and waited for our meals, watching patrons who arrived after us being served. After 30 minutes or more, I finally caught the attention of the first waitress and asked about our order. “Oh, it will just be a few more minutes.” The eggs were definitely not cooked to medium, served with runny undercooked egg white. The bacon and hash brown served with the big breakfast were overcooked. All-in-all an experience I have no desire to repeat. The view is the best thing this restaurant has...

Service is great and coffee was okay, but nothing to rave about.

Tried to order the Big Hub Breakfast with smoked salmon instead of bacon and was told that it can't be substituted as it is too difficult to do due to figuring out pricing as it has been apportioned and incorporated into the whole meal. They have priced add on pricing for bacon at $5.50 and the salmon at $6 separately, so I don't know why it could be so difficult but I guess they don't have calculators to figure this stuff out.

The waiter said I could remove the bacon and add the smoked salmon but It would cost an extra $6 for the smoked salmon and I'd have to pay for the bacon I wouldn't eat. So it can be done, just to difficult to do some simple arithmetic and have to overcharge the customer for the privilege.

Ended up ordering scrambled eggs on toast and they couldn't provide evenly toasted bread for $14. Surely they can afford a toaster than can evenly toast bread when charging...

Visited East end hub this morning with my wife. I'll preface this by saying the reason we came here was to re-test the bacon and egg roll I had roughly 12 months ago. I came in January 2021 and decided it was the best bacon and egg roll. Since then, I've had my fair share of other bacon and egg rolls, so testing out the number 1 spot was important.

We arrived, it was around 8am and fairly quiet. Service was great, ordered coffees straight away and they arrived shortly after.

I ordered a bacon and egg roll and my wife had the banana ricotta hotcakes. The roll was great. Was it as good as I remember? Kind of. I'd go as far as saying it's definitely one of the best rolls in newy. Really enjoyed.

My wife's hotcakes were also excellent, she was very happy with them and they looked great!

Will definitely be back, but first I need to see if there are any rival bacon and egg rolls...