Tart it up

Cafe review: French Tart Cafe

We’re starving. Our friend moved into a new flat, and the author got a bit more sozzled than she had planned last night- meaning she had two drinks (it doesn’t take much when you’re only 160cm tall). But there is one bright little light at the end of any big night out in Hamilton – it’s called the French Tart Cafe, and it cooks the kind of breakfasts that make your cholesterol-o-meter go BEEEEEP! and your taste buds squeal like little girls as they wallow in cream, salt, butter, cheese…sorry, I’m just having a bit of a moment.

TLR orders Eggs Benedict with salmon ($15.50). It’s served up on thick slabs of crusty bread with wilted spinach, wedges of satisfying salmon, and a refreshingly tangy hollandaise. It drives me nuts when hollandaise tastes like mayonnaise out of the jar- gelatinous and bland – but this stuff has just the right amount of lemon bite to keep it from being sickly-rich.

However, I often find that the true judge of a breakfast chef’s mastering of the culinary arts lies in scrambled eggs. If someone can take a dish which every man, woman, and inebriated  uni student can whip up, and make it into something a customer is willing to fork out $14.50 for (as I did this morning), then s/he can truly be lauded as an expert.  I don’t know who the chef is at the French Tart, but s/he is most definitely one of these. Their plates of scrambled eggs, roasted herb tomatoes, toasted and buttered Volare bread, and button mushrooms giddily drowning in cream (though you can get bacon instead) are so good that I must now admit something: I have never been able to order anything else off the menu.
Oh yes, and the coffee: some of the best in town. It’s Fixation, air roasted (that’s usually a good thing) in Tauranga and always handled perfectly by the baristas at the French Tart. I order two long blacks ($2.50 each), and TLR almost orders one- he doesn’t even like coffee.

I’ve never been to France.  I have no idea if this is “authentic,” and the staff don’t look “tarty” at all – or French for that matter. But the food is bloody good, the coffee is excellent, and their custard squares are not too be ignored if you have even the slightest bit of room left in your arteries. This place is not for the faint-hearted (in more ways than one), but their prices are great, the people are friendly, and the food speaks for itself – no matter what language you’re talking.

French Tart Cafe
548B River Road, Fairfield
4 stars

See Mackenzie’s original blogpost here.