I had a bit of a mixed experience at White Rabbit. For a start, I was expecting West Juliett, which had been in that location since my big boy was toddler-sized, munching on their eggs and soldiers. But I guess cafes come and go, and White Rabbit has been there for the past two months. They’ve turned the side room into a big, open bakery and there was an amazing spread of house-baked goodies piled high on baking trays on the counter top. I couldn’t keep my hands off a salted caramel macadamia cookie. I ordered my coffee and banana bread and waited for it at one of the tables inside because it was late in the afternoon and there was no one else there. A little while later, I’d almost finished the cookie and was still waiting, when I glanced over and the coffee was just sitting there on the counter. “Is this mine?” “Oh, yeah, sorry.” There was literally no-one else in the entire place, and they forgot to even call out my coffee? I was right there with a huge pram, eating one of their cookies! The coffee was ok, but a bit on the milky/tasteless side. The cookie was great, so I was expecting an equally excellent, house-baked banana bread. Nope. It tasted like banana topping on a cinnamon donut, just like the ones at Beloli and the Hollis Park Cafe. It wasn’t house-baked at all (which, with a bakery that size, I reckon is pretty inexcusable) and moreover it wasn’t even good.
New cafes need to start out strong, like Little Bear, which had been open only 3 weeks and delivered one of the best coffees I’ve had in a long time. Can’t say the same for White Rabbit, so let’s hope it’s just finding its feet and it’s only up from here.
Coffee: 0
BB: -1