1 star on the basis of the dreadful, dreadful kids meals.
I used to come down to the Red Velvet to sit at a desk, enjoy their food and coffee and work on my laptop every week for ages. It was a sad day when it burned down. I went there yesterday for the first time since the rebuild, and it looks like it has lost most of its customers to the Lotus Cafe down the road. Anyway, I took my two kids there anyway for lunch.
Staff were excellent (I recognise some of the regulars from before). My meal was OK (the duck legs) but I give it 1 - 2 stars for its approaches to kids meals (and won't be coming back there on that basis). We had a choice of plain spaghetti with just tomato tomato sauce (not bolognese), or a 'platter'. The platter concept is OK: it's done especially well at Peppermint Bay where it's served up in a Bento box, and in a lot of the cafes in Salamanca, but when the meals came out, the platters were so disappointing neither of my kids would touch them. My kids aren't fussy either.
They were incredibly poorly presented, like an afterthought, or as if the kids didn't matter as customers. A cold roof-tile of rock-hard burned sourdough bread about a cm thick that neither of my kids could penetrate. No butter to soften them up, and certainly nothing that the teeth of a three or four year old could handle. A half an apple that was already browning, and small pile of grated carrot that was dry as a bone and blackening at the edges, a dollop of very strongly scented hummus and two slices of out of the packet ham.
My kids wouldn't touch the carrot or apple, the scent of the hummus was way to strong for them, and I had to break the bread up so they could eat the softer inside and didn't have to eat the burned bits.
The ham was definitely out of the packet ham and not local produce. Either that, or local producers are now sending their ham to Coles.
In the end, my kids nibbled at the bread and had a mouthful of ham. After that, we decamped to the Cafe down the road where everyone seemed to be, and fed them there whilst I had a coffee.
My thoughts, for what they are worth? Spaghetti with a plain tomato sauce is about 50c or less of produce, everyone will work that out quickly enough, and not want to pay $12 for it and if you are going to have a kids platter, then talk to some mothers about what their kids eat: don't guess.
Kids are customers too, and deserve their meal to be prepared with fresh, attractive produce and presented well.
At least cut your carrots into sticks!
The kids meal concept is done well in many restaurants, but not here. I won't waste my time going here again with the kids, but will shift to the cafe down the road.
Mind you, no complaints about the adult food.
I had duck drumsticks, two lattes and a trifle, my kids had one Fanta-like drink, two kids plates and a cake each. That cost over $100. read more
