Hyde Park Barracks Cafe, Sydney

As much as I love the Crave Sydney International Food Festival month, uni work tends to always get in the way of me going to all the events I want to. Last year it was my thesis, and this year I was inundated with assignments because the lecturers thought it would be fun for us to have them all due in the same week. I was glad to have the final week of Crave to go to the events that I wanted to and Sir D and I decide to head out to a nice brunch at Hyde Park Barracks Cafe one weekend.

Home-made granola, natural yoghurt and poached fruit

Brunch is a three-course affair here, priced at $25pp and served with English Breakfast tea or filtered coffee. We start with some granola with yoghurt, berry compote and poached pear. The granola is crunchy and I love finding big chunks of granola stuck together. It's a little dry and could have done with a bit more yoghurt but it's a good start to the meal and the poached pear provides a nice sweetness to the dish.

Eggs three ways

I'm more of a savoury person at breakfast time so I was looking forward to indulging in the eggs three ways. These came as three small portions on a plate and all of them were presented beautifully.

Egg, chorizo and roast tomato tart

The first is a savoury tart of egg, chorizo and roast tomato in a thin puff pastry. The egg is cooked so that it is just barely set which means lots of runny yolk oozes out as you cut into it. Hidden amongst the egg are chunks of chorizo, and there are roasted tomato halves on top. The flavours are a little lighter than I would have expected but it is nevertheless tasty. I particularly like the crisp and buttery pastry exterior.

Capsicum, caramelised onion and fetta frittata

I have to say that frittatas are not my favourite preparation of eggs and the ones I've had before tasted rather soggy and bland. This version is definitely flavoursome and less soggy than the ones I've had previously, with a lovely sweet flavour from the capsicum in the frittata and the mound of caramelised onion on top. The bits of fetta provide bursts of saltiness so that it's not too sweet overall.

Ham eggs benedict

The eggs benedict is probably my favourite of the three, with a poached egg, a crisp toasted muffin and a creamy hollandaise sauce. Some thinly sliced ham sits under the egg and again I think the whole thing could have done with a bit more flavour, but who can complain when there's a perfectly poached egg with oozy yolky innards waiting to be devoured?

Belgian chocolate waffles, cherry compote, coconut gelato

Sir D had been looking forward to our last course, the Belgian chocolate waffles, the most and is dismayed to find out that it's a shared plate. He doesn't do so well with the sharing thing you see =P In any case we receive one reasonably large chocolate waffle to share, which is topped with cherry compote, chocolate sauce, toasted coconut flakes and a scoop of coconut gelato. We're tentative about the gelato since neither of us are big coconut fans but we find that it's not too strong on the coconut flavour and in fact is quite nice with bits of toasted coconut throughout the gelato. The waffle itself is lacking a bit on the crispy side of things but has a nice chocolate flavour and is dense and chewy. All in all, it's a very satisfying meal and I think I could get used to having three courses for brunch!

Hyde Park Barracks Cafe
Queen Square, Hyde Park Barracks
Macquarie Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Ph: +61 2 9222 1815


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