Biga - 200 Hutt St, Adelaide

This is one of those places that has so much potential it makes you cringe when they under-deliver and you're pained with the realisation that it's all just seductive packaging with no substance whatsoever.

Actually. That describes most Adelaide Cafes and Restaurants.

Having just landed in Adelaide less than hour ago after a very early morning flight, we were on a mission to locate a venue for a good, hearty breakfast. Out of the four cafes on the corner of Hutt and Halifax St, Biga seemed to be the most unpretentious candidate. With laid-back seating outside under massive white umbrellas, the light-filled cafe was clean, warm, and homely. The waitress was friendly enough, even though she was cool and rather occupied to grant us much of her attention.


With a neat one sided seating space and a clean, transparent counter display cabinet displaying all the pastry, muffins, slices and many others on offer, I was quite delighted with, and had high expectations of, what we decided on from the menu - Brioche dolce: brioche roll served with condiments and fresh cream, and the Big Breakfast: 2 poached eggs, layered stack of grilled chipolata sausage, field mushrooms, rosti potato and roast tomato on Biga toast.


Our coffee and food arrived relatively promptly. I immediately regretted trusting the breakfast chefs in a foreign state, particularly this one, with the holy task of poaching eggs. As I witnessed my egg yolks rolling back and forth under my very eyes, my stomach lurching with every shake and wobble, half expecting the undercooked egg whites to give way to the liquid yokes that's yearning to burst free from it's delicate confinements.

The sausages were far from being qualified as chipolata, and overcooked to a disturbing state. The mushrooms were totally tasteless, not to mention the potato rosti looked like it was freshly unpacked from a frozen homebrand packet and absolutely wrong. The much fussed about Biga toast (apparently sour-dough and freshly baked) turned out to be two slices of cold, over-toasted slices of bread, with no recollection of its former aristocratic status after its abuse in the oven. To give credit where credit is due - the bacon rashes were quite edible. To my utter shock and surprise.

I was less than impressed with the rock-hard, stone-like brioche (served with cream!), and the coffee - although palatable - failed to make an impression as actual coffee. Having offloaded most of my breakfast, I thought I'd suppress my hunger by ordering a hot-crossed bun.

Besides the few charcoals of burnt sultanas I picked off the bun, it wasn't too bad. Although for $3 I'd rather have a choc-chip hot-crossed bun from Baker's Delight.

Food: 4/10

Coffee: 5/10

Service: 7/10

Value: For the quality of the food - 5/10
Ambiance: Chilled, relaxed, laid-back - 8.5/10

Overall: 29.5/50

Encore: not for all the runny egg yolks in the world