I went to Mule for breakfast not too long ago after having walked past it many times before. From the outside, the place looks promising – hippie-ish with funky retro furnishing. The eggs used are free-range. Coffee is free-trade. So it has a bit of a hippie feel to it, I thought to myself: why not? So on a fine Saturday morning, while I waited for the washing machine to finish doing the washing, I took a stroll up Sydney Road and dropped into Mule for breakfast. Big mistake.
The place is not particularly busy but I have to say, it was quite awkward having to stand by the door for what felt like a long time, unsure of whether I should wait to be seated or I should strut around like I own the place. Finally, a waitress spotted me and told me I could sit anywhere so I selected a table by the entrance. Even though service-wise Mule was off to a bad start, it quickly redeemed itself with its speedy order-to-table turnaround. I ordered scrambled eggs on toast with hash brown and baked beans on the side. Boy was it a disappointment. The hash brown looked like it was thawed out of a bag of commercially processed hash browns from the supermarket’s frozen food section. It still looked pale in its meticulous oval shape, like it had a too-quick dip in and out of the frying pan (or the oven, whichever the case may be). The baked beans were even worse – bland, dry, almost turned into mush, and–you guessed it–like it came out of a cheap can of baked beans from the supermarket. I almost gagged when I heard a customer said, “Thanks for the beautiful breakkie.” when she was paying, thinking to myself: which planet did you come from? The entire plate looks like it was assembled out of the supermarket aisle!
I hastily finished my breakfast (really, how else would you eat sub-standard quality food except hastily?), paid and left. Well at least I know that’s one place I won’t ever go to for breakfast again.
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