Riley Street Café and Wine, Surry Hills – Rating: 16/25

Riley Street Café and Wine is well known for their accomplished dinner menu.  Wine is their forte.  While this is all well and good, it’s how they can start your morning that I’m interested in.

The café itself is quite compressed.  The narrow interior squeezes in a row of tables and a bar that they somehow manage to prepare food behind!  It’s for this reason that the breakfast menu is very concise.  There are currently only two hot dishes and we tried them both!

The coffee was enjoyable, neither too work nor too strong.  It was prepared quickly but the appearance made it obvious that they were both rushed when compared to examples that I’m used to.

More than just your average egg and bacon roll ($14), RSC’s version is served on a ciabatta roll that is about to explode!  Lavish amounts of bacon, a fried egg, caramelised onion, tomato, rocket and salsa verde.  That’s quite a lot of ingredients but they worked well together.  The tomato relish actually packs quite a punch which I was impressed with.  My guest felt compelled to tackle this roll with a knife and fork as going in elbows deep probably would have become a very messy affair.  The roll did require quite a bit of hacking to cut through it but this was a great mix of fresh and cooked ingredients.

You can also add provolone for $2.

The toasted sourdough of my eggs on toast ($16) was much easier to manipulate and arrived bearing a layer of whole milk ricotta, bright fresh avocado, two poached eggs and prosciutto.  One of the eggs was too cooked through while the other was perfectly poached with a runny yolk.  Ordered without the prosciutto this would make for a very satisfying vegetarian dish.  The ricotta was deliciously creamy while the tomato compote on top added a sharp kick.

Also available is toast (sourdough, soy & linseed, gluten free, rye & caraway, $7) with housemade strawberry compote, peanut butter dulce de leche or Vegemite, fruit and granola (served with natural yoghurt, black and white chia seeds and Oxford Falls honeycomb, $12) as well as salads and eggplant parmigiana ($18) for lunch.

I found service to be a mixed bag with the staff sometimes quite attentive and at others paying no notice to us at all.  While they were apologetic to the two customers next to us for getting both of their food orders wrong, there seemed to be a few things amiss with the service.

This is purely a review of my morning exploit and not a reflection on the very different kind of service that you expect and receive in the evenings at a wine bar.  While the dishes were enjoyable, hopefully this was just an ‘off’ morning in the service department.