Not Quite Eggact – Egg Bistro, East Bris

My brother posted a comment that he had managed to make it into not one, but two recent blog posts.  As he visited again from the big smoke last weekend, I have decided to make it a hat trick.  I have been wanting to go to Egg Bistro for a while as I pass it every day on my way to work.  Ever since the Courier Mail included it in ‘Brisbane’s Best Breakfasts’ though, there had been long queues outside ever since.  Amazingly though, I have ended up visiting twice in a week.

The Monday lunch crowd is very much ‘ladies who lunch’ and as I sat in the cool and casually elegant courtyard, I was able to listen in on conversations about buying organic, greedy nieces and setting up a shelf company (the minimise tax kind rather than the Ikea kind).  The Saturday lunch crowd is made up of ‘ladies who lunch’ and those who work 9 to 5 paying their taxes because they have not been clever enough to set up a shelf company.  There were a few birthday groups tossed in for good measure.  I chose well on Monday and was looking forward to recommending my dish to the others but by Saturday, the menu had changed.  At least you know it’s fresh! Lunch mains vary from around $16 for a small portion to around $30 for larger meals.  The Steak Salad was a rare piece of steak sliced and tossed through salad leaves with small dots of pate, crispy onions and a potato dressing.  It came with three buttery pieces of thinly sliced, toasted baguette.  I have to say that I demolished it and particularly enjoyed smearing small bites of pate onto the toast with little crispy bits of onion squished on. The thing it lacked was some decent seasoning when the steak was cooked and some type of zesty dressing or a sharp salsa verde with capers to offset the subtle flavours in an otherwise delicious salad.

I had seen the Risotto of the Day on Monday and it looked great so I ordered a portion for Saturday.  The Saffron Risotto with Scallops was creamy, the rice had the perfect give to it, there were discernible flecks of saffron but it had absolutely no seasoning.  My husband had a taste and deemed it bland.  Not sure if they were using salt reduced stock or whether anyone had checked the dish whilst they were cooking but it was a disappointment.   Sean had the Barramundi and Crab burger (or the ‘fish burger’ as the waitress called it when she delivered it), served on a bun swathed in tartare sauce and some shoestring fries  that looked liked they were from a packet.  I can’t say how it tasted as it was on the plate one minute and in his stomach the next but said it was tasty though probably over egging the pudding have both barramundi and crab in a burger.