Zinc Cafe — Restaurant in Sydney

Snobby kitchen, sub-par service, average coffee and food. Story to follow.

Went here for breakfast with my girlfriend. I'm vegan, she can't eat starchy foods. I order the mushroom bruschetta, she orders the "trout and poached egg kedgeree." Her meal arrives and it's a bowl of rice with an egg on it. If there was trout on it, you couldn't see it - the menu doesn't mention rice at all, and it comprises 95% of the meal. It's basically a breakfast risotto.

Now normally we'd just have swapped, but on account of the finely shredded trout mixed throughout, I couldn't eat it. My girlfriend is gutted, she hates wasting food, but just can't digest it. We explain this to the waiter and he warns us that "the kitchen will be angry." Uhm, ok?

We're say we're happy to pay for a different meal that she can eat. So he takes the untouched meal to the kitchen and they say we have to pay for the rice bowl and whatever else we order instead, because "a kedgeree is a classic English breakfast and we should have known there was rice in it." Keep in mind the menu says nothing but trout and egg.

I've worked in half a dozen cafés, and lived in the UK for years; never heard of kedgeree. We even asked the waiter after the fact and he admitted he didn't know (and it's his job!) So yeah we paid for the damn breakfast risotto we didn't touch and left.

As for the Bruschetta and coffee: it was ok. Coffee was a little heavily roasted for such a 'fancy' joint, Bruschetta was tasty, but a tad soggy. If you want brekky in Potts point, you're better off going to La Buvette around the corner; much tastier, better service, and much more down to earth. If you want fine dining that's actually good, go to Yellow further down the...

Efficient service to start with. We were offered a coffee immediately after sitting down. However, it went downhill from there. A young male waiter with glasses approacehed us a minute after the coffee order was taken and asked us to order or meal. We asked for a few minutes, as we had not been given menus yet. He left us with one from a near table. Less than a minute later, while my friend was actually reading the menu, he came back and was clearly disappointed we were still not ready. Again, literally a minute later, back again and forcing is to order. I politely explained we weren't being given much time and a second menu would help showed things up so i could have a look as well. He flung one down and matched off. The cafe was busy but there were still empty tables, so it's not like they were trying to turn tables quickly. After the storming off, we were ignored for 20 minutes. As much as we tried to catch his attention, nothing worked. Even the diners at the table next to us noticed this and shook their heads in disgust. In the meantime, we had finished our frst coffees, not been offered a second and were about to pay and leave when an older gentleman came over and rather abruptlu took our meal order. Well, I'm sorry we were an inconvenience to the staff on Friday (21/7) morning. We will not be making that mistake again. Total time from sitting to meals being delivered? 1 hour and 15...

seriously, learn some social skills, waiter! the way you’re treating people is absolutely insane

i came to sydney with my mum to visit, we tried to find a non-busy cafe to get some coffee and we stumbled across this place it looked good at first, the guy who took us to our table was very friendly but the waiter was absolutely horrible and impatient!

when he came to take our order after about LESS THAN 2 MINUTES of being there (barely any time to let us read the menu), my mum ordered first, then he just turned to me. not even a “what would you like?”. he just stayed silent and turned. i didn’t even notice him and after about 3 seconds i look up at him and he said in a really snobby tone “it’s your turn.” i responded back with a “i’m not sure yet..” and he responded with “oh! you’re not sure?” mocking me then walking away. mocking a teenager! there’s no way you’re actually pressed by a TEENAGER, that’s embarrassing.

he didn’t even say “i’ll come back to you” or anything like a normal person does. we literally had our coffees, paid, then walked off. btw, the iced mocha was EXTREMELY bitter. i have no clue how you can make a mocha taste like black coffee.

this review is obviously going to mean nothing to him anyhow. he’s an old man who doesn’t want to be told different by a 14 year old (or anyone else) who actually understands how to be nice to people. learn to brighten up, it doesn’t...