Pearl Café: a review

Pearl Café: 28 Logan Rd, Woolloongabba QLD 4102

I had a day off work yesterday and the weather was sunny and fine, so I decided to go out for a spot of lunch at Pearl Café. I was quite looking forward to it, since my sister has been raving about their breakfast menu for a while, and is a regular customer of theirs. Unfortunately, it did not impress me at all, and even my sister, who hadn't tried their non-breakfast options before, expressed disappointment. I don't want to waste too much time blogging about an eatery that I don't personally recommend, so I will make this review brief.

Where to start?

The food we ordered: 

Citron presse: 'fresh lemon juice, mint, sirop de gomme, soda' ($7). 

'Fresh, natural Coffin Bay oysters' ($3 each)

'Pulled pork, cabbage & caramelised onion toastie' ($18)

'Roasted duck salad, quince..' ($24)

The Negatives:

1. Café temperature is set ridiculously low: Being a beautiful, fine day, it was neither too hot nor too cold outside, but the inside of the café was like a refrigerator, despite looking all cozy through the front door. If it wasn't because it took so long to find a parking spot, and that I really wanted to try out their food, I would have walked straight out of there. The cold temperature mirrored the atmosphere of the place and the attitude of the staff.
2. Extremely slow service: We arrived at about 12.15pm. The drinks came out pretty quickly, but my citron presse was way too sour, even for a homemade lemonade, so I had to let the ice melt to dilute the acidity, before I could consume it. We ordered half a dozen natural oysters, but they didn't come out until at least 12.45pm. They were served natural, so required no cooking whatsoever, and were dressed only in some diced onions, shallots and cracked pepper. So why did it take so long? Were they waiting for their stock to defrost or something? They did almost have a full house that afternoon, but the café is small with only 7 other small tables (mainly with couples) on the inside and 2 out the front, so it seems more like a time management issue. If they have problems with putting food out in a timely manner at lunchtime, I wonder how they cope with their dinner service. With the long waiting time, I expected the oysters to taste amazing or to have a really delicious dressing. Alas, they tasted just like how they looked - ok-in-freshness oysters topped with crunchy bits of raw onion. I've had fresher oysters with tastier dressings and a significantly shorter wait. Our actual lunch dishes took another 15 minutes or so to arrive at the table. Around this time, we had to add more money to the parking meter, because we had not anticipated that we'd need to spend any more than an hour at the café.
3. Extremely mediocre food: A picture paints a thousand words, and I'm sure you can see from the image of my 'toastie' above, that the top half of my baguette was burnt right across its length. I personally would be too embarrassed to put that on the table. If I burnt my bread at home, I would at least scrape off the burnt bits with a knife or slice it off, because it's not healthy to ingest. The toasted bread roll was too hard to work on with a knife and fork, so I ended up wrapping my serviette around it to pick up and eat directly. It was so oily that the oil seeped through the thick serviette to my fingers. I would not have minded so much if the food tasted good, but, sadly, it did not impress. Despite the oiliness, the pork filling tasted dry, and the sliced cheese triangles atop this filling were also dry, without enhancing the overall taste. On the contrary, its strong flavour overpowered the taste of everything else, except for the even stronger tarry burnt taste of the bread. I think there needs to be some sort of sauce in there to bind it together.

My sister's roasted duck salad was small in serving size, dull in presentation, and probably needed more duck meat in it to justify its name. She didn't enjoy it and didn't finish it, despite its meagre portion size.
4. The price: because of the above-mentioned points. I don't mind paying more money for good quality food and/or service, but this place was not up to scratch in either arenas.

The Positives:

Sorry, none perceived at this time.

If you're so very inclined to try out the Pearl Café, I'd give lunch a miss and maybe take a gamble on their breakfast offerings instead. Since my sister and quite a few people on Urbanspoon seem to be die-hard fans of their breakfast menu, I'm sure they must be capable of making some nice things. However, as keen as I am to try out good breakfast places, I don't think I'll be returning to this particular café any time soon. The experience has left me cold. In both senses of the word.