Bills, Darlinghurst

With 2 cafes in Sydney and 6 in Japan & London, one would expect the food and service at Bills to be nothing short of spectacular. Sadly it was not so....

usually, long queues = good food...

I began my Queens birthday long weekend with an outing to Bills on Saturday morning. We decided to try out the Darlinghurst cafe since that's where it all began. As I drove by and saw the queue, I was happy. Long queues usually meant good food :) So I quickly dropped the wifey and friend off to get a spot in line whilst I went off hunting for a car spot. Parking is painful in this area with most places being just 1hour free. 



Whilst staring through the window at other patrons eating with my face pressed against the glass (i jest), a delivery guy came by with about 4 boxes meat.  Noticing that it was from Vics Meat, I was excited, knowing that they bought quality stuff. Vics Meat is my go-to place for when barbeques are thrown. Visit it some time! :)

Anyhow, after about 30 minutes, we finally got a table inside.

Chic interior

Upon entering the cafe, we were greeted by a large communal table with artsy magazines, plants and 'fresh fruit' in the centre. The place looked good however the low ceilings only made everyone's chatter seem extra loud. We found ourselves raising our voices more than usual just to have a decent conversation.This is where it all started to go downhill...

After our coffees were ordered, we asked for a bottle of water and 3 glasses. When this was placed on our table, I had something that looked like a 3" long slimy beansprout root stuck to the side of the glass, half of it floating in my water. I'm usually not toooooo fussed about little things but this was quite gross, so I had it replaced. 

When the coffees arrived, I didn't bother taking any photos. No latte art, nice fern leaf , no hearts or cute bears, not even a blob of milk froth or anything that resembled the barristas pride in his work. It looked like he stirred it with a spoon!

Zucchini fritters, deep fried egg, haloumi, parsley salad, tahini yoghurt, pickles ($23.50!)

I planned to order the Zucchini fritters dish all along after recollecting a photo I saw from another blogger on Urbanspoon. I must say, she was a really good photographer.  :)

The 2 slices of  Haloumi had gone cold and rubbery, the deep fried egg was well...deep fried I guess, and rubbery as well. The pickles looked exactly like those that you would see at a Sushi Train outlet and I'm not sure if you can see it but, the parsley leaves I was given were really old and stringy. If you looked up any online dictionary, the word salad means "a dish of raw vegetables" I only had a vegetable (plural!) so how can it be a parsley salad! :P 

If I had to find a positive here, the Zucchini fritter was nice and crunchy. It was flavoured well. Now on to the missus's meal.

Corn fritters, roast tomato, spinach and bacon ($21.50)

What a waste of good meat! There were 2 slices of bacon on plate but they were cooked as 1! The kitchenhand didn't even bother to stretch it out on the grill. Sheer laziness. Then a handful of spinach leaves were placed next to the bacon and this was propped up by the corn fritter. Missus found a few slimy leaves between that pile. 

Once again the positive here would probably be the Corn fritter.

With the number of cafes out there still left unvisited, Bills for now is right at the bottom of my list of places to visit in the near future. The food and drinks were nowhere up to par with the prices charged for it.

If anyone from Bills is reading this, please take the above as constructive feedback. 
It is the collective thoughts of a few people who go out every weekend for brunch.