Carriages Cafe

My man & I decided to go on a bit of a café crawl. Each Saturday we go to a different café to find Auckland’s best flat white’s, French toast and Eggs benny.  He’s owned café’s and roasted coffee. I’m a medical student & a coffee addict. Carriages café was recommended to us by a colleague of my partner. We drove out to Kumeu, and saw the Carriages from the main road, but were a bit confused about how to get there. We pulled into the garden center and there was a small sign for the café, we walked through the garden centre to the café. A bigger sign might have been helpful! We were greeted by warm staff, order our coffee’s and brunch, found ourselves a table in one of the carriages. It’s quite a cool setting, but because of the acoustics of the carriages you couldn’t easily have a private conversation. Our seats had a nice view of the garden and the pond, but the windows could have done with a bit of a clean. The coffee was pretty damn good, Carriages use Allpress coffee. We had flat whites and my man even went back for seconds. The milk was nice and silky, quite a good temperature too. He had the French toast with crispy bacon, raspberry compote, banana & maple syrup for $15.50 He’s a fan of maple syrup and this had more than enough! The raspberry compote was a nice twist. Overall the dish was good and for a fair price. I had the Eggs Benedict, with bacon, light hollandaise, rocket, house relish, served on focaccia bread for $16.50 Traditionally, Eggs Benny is served on English muffins but Focaccia bread seems to be the trend these days and I quite like it. The dish had drizzled around it some sort of green dressing/sauce. I can’t tell from the menu exactly what it was, but it had garlic in it. I wasn’t a fan, but because it was drizzled around the edges I was able to avoid most of it. Other than that, the dish was good and for a good price. The service was good, friendly staff. It wasn’t a long wait for the food and the coffee, we stayed for most of our morning and had a good time. We were quite impressed with the price, recently we have been paying horrendous prices ($19.50 for French toast at The Library Café, in Onehunga) It was a good morning, but nothing too special. I was quite Impressed with the menu they also had a selection of gourmet home-made pies, paninis, salads, cakes and slices in a display cabinet. They also have a special board. Coffee: 7/10 Food: 7/10 Service: 9/10 Price: 8/10 Over all Experience: 7/10 Would recommend, I’m sure we will be back sometime. It would be perfect to go sit in the sun one summers morning & sipping on our coffee’s! A good place to take a few friends.