Melange Cafe Bar Restaurant

Yeah, no. This café is situated in the beautiful Roma Street Parklands overlooking the man-​made waterfall. I really wanted to try this place before but last time I was here it was closed. However last Sunday it was open.
First let’s start with the delivery. Ten dollars minimum. All I wanted was a coffee, but no. No ATM in sight. So I decided to get a cake. Hardly any of the cakes, muffin or cookies were named so I had to guess what they were or ask about a whole bunch, and hardly any had prices making it difficult to try and calculate up to the ten dollar minimum.
But no worries! I find out it’s only ten dollars for a slice of obviously cooked elsewhere, thawed here cake plus three dollars for a squirt of cream. Yeah, no thanks. I’ll have a muffin.
So after ordering we sat down, unfortunately the tables closest to the waterfall view were roped off. I am not sure when they open that area of the café, I would’ve thought on a Sunday afternoon but I guess not.
Anyway we sit down and while waiting for our coffees all I can hear is this weird music like how Snow White or Cinderella in the original Disney movies sing when they are sad. Very peculiar. Oh well, someone’s taste maybe?
So the waiter brings water for us but give us yellowing plastic cups. My mum mentions that they are plastic and instead of getting us glasses he replies, «the plastic cups are so the children don’t hurt themselves» and leaves us with the yellow cups. Well, I don’t have any children of my own so I can’t concern whether the have suicidal tendencies or not. However last time I checked my mother and I were not children and neither did we have any with us.
Would it really have been to difficult to get us glasses? In a coffee shop? Who knows.
The muffin was fine and the iced coffee OK.

This little café and restaurant lies in the heart of the Roma St Parklands and has the potential to be a fantastic place to enjoy the beautiful park scenery. Sadly, although it does most things right, it is majorly lacking in one department: service.
I’ve been back now twice for early-​ish breakfasts (around 7 am) and both times there were virtually no other customers. However, both times I’ve had to walk up to the counter in order to flag down someone to help me out. I’d even watched a couple families come in and meander around uncertain what to do since there was nobody there to get them seated.
I’m going to now jump down to the end of the meal when I tried to pay and unsurprisingly there was nobody around to give me a check or tell me what to do. I had to once again walk up to the counter and tell the waitress that I wanted to pay. Overall, the service is sub par and really should be resolved because there are so many other positives going for this place.
First positive — the food. The breakfast menu is on one page and consists of primarily simple meals but man do they do it well. The first thing I tried was an eggs Benedict with smoked salmon. The eggs were poached to a good consistency and the hollandaise sauce wasn’t too heavy. All of the ingredients sat on top of a slice of sourdough bread that just absolutely hit the spot. In my second pass through, I got the big breakfast and let me tell you, it is BIG. There was bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomato and some has browns. The sausage hadn’t finished cooking when I got my plate so the waitress told me she would bring it out a bit later. When it arrived, instead of leaving it on a little side plate next to my meal, the waitress just brushed it onto my plate. Not cool. This place is supposed to be a bit more upmarket than your typical diner. If this was back home in Texas and I was eating soul food, this type of behavior would tolerated because the lady at the counter would be asking «how y’all doin’ hon? your day treatin’ ya all right?» But this is Brisbane CBD and this place is set up like a classy café what with the chandeliers and whatnot.
This brings me to the second positive — the ambiance. I love it. You can see from my second picture that the layout of this little restaurant resembles the inside of a log cabin but a FANCY log cabin. There are two big chandeliers dotting the ceiling and occasionally they pull open a curtain that can divide the restaurant into 2 separate seating areas (for private events). Also the key draw was the fact that if you sit right back the edge of the restaurant, you get a magnificent view of the beautiful Roma St Parklands.
I’m conflicted. I honestly that this place should deserve less than 3 stars but I don’t think it’s really deserving of 2 stars because it has such massive potential. If they could fix the service issue, business would be so much better and they would gain a very consistent regular.