Serves You Right

LOCATION
Opposite Target, midway along Unley Road.

PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIA
This place has character. Through its old-school shopfront windows appear rows of books on floor-to-ceiling shelves. You cannot help but smile. It reminds of Black Books on the ABC. This quirky charm beckons you in with promise of difference. On Unley Road, there are many cafés serving predictable pizza, pasta and panini. They lack pizzazz.

Inside the rickety, well-worn doorway, you sense a place with personality (note the cook’s cleaver door handle). Floorboards are underfoot and at the bare wooden tables sit a dignified bunch - ladies who lunch, coffee and cake devotees, and those taking a break from fashionable Unley shopping.

Antique scales share the contemporary company of exposed bulb lighting on a chest of drawers. A window bench welcomes you to watch the world go by or perhaps stick your nose in one of those books. They are amusingly filed by colour, so grab a green or yank out a yellow. For hands-free reading, sit at the wall plastered in pages torn from the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

The menu distracts from Romeo’s romantic sonnet with a spritely salad of barbecued chilli prawns and mango salsa, and chilli-salted calamari with capsicum salad and lime aioli. The lip smacking continues with a spiced lamb burger and tomato and pear chutney. A 150gram fillet steak sanger comes with onion jam, but the 300g ‘portahouse’, laid on creamy truffled mash with caramelised shallots and white beans, has ultimate appeal.

In the kitchen (and front-of-house) is Sam, young son of Antony Worrall-Thompson - famed English celebrity chef and restaurateur, (here recently as a guest of Tasting Australia). Sam knows what women want, and pleases them with “ladies day”. On Wednesdays, this café’s popular courtyard fills with gals gossiping over Sam’s lunch specials of sexy salads and bubbles. Some may return for one of his “hangover cure breakfasts”. Serves you Right!

Roz Taylor