Southern Cross Bar & Restaurant

35 Abel Smith Street, Wellington
384 9085

Good Parts: Good atmosphere and plush interior, lemon and raspberry sodas are yum.
Bad parts: The service, the food and too expensive.

Ordered: Breakfast for the Hungry $16.50, lemon and raspberry soda $3  

Rating: 10%

After a hard morning of work some fellow friends and I decided to give the new revamped Southern Cross Bar and Restaurant a go for a late breakfast (or brunch of you will). Previously Zebos, a local student haunt until its recent refurbishment, was the ideal place for a huge cheap breakfast after a hard night drinking or any other explicit activities. The breakfast was plentiful and the coffee cup was bottomless. The best part was each item was just $2, eggs, bacon, hash browns, sausages, it wasn’t gourmet but you got your money’s worth and it was satisfying.

Recently the bar’s interior look has changed, although it is still a regular haunt for randy young first year university students, loaded on beer and cursing for a screw, the new look is up market and swank…a complete 180 degree change from what it used to be. Although the regular clientele has not changed so it does not really matter how polished the venue is. Along with this aesthetic transformation the menu too has also been updated and tailored to match the overall look of the bar. Everything appears gourmet and “homemade” and the prices reflect this, even though old favorites are still here such as two Weetbix and milk for…wait for it…$4.50! You must be joking? You can buy an entire pack for that price. Don’t the owners realize that most people know that? It’s not like they’re trying to hide it either by calling it premium wheat cereal cakes drowned in farm fresh organic milk. No it is just fucking Weetbix!

As we ordered (there were 7 of us, but only 4 ordered food) the waitress was accommodating and pleasant, but unhelpful. I ordered the Breakfast for the Hungry, which consists of eggs on toast, a hash brown, mushrooms, sausages, bacon, home-made baked beans and a grilled tomato. I wanted to make a substitution, no bacon and extra sausages in its place, plus I requested my eggs to be scrambled and well done (as in not droopy). She went and checked with the kitchen if I can have the extras sausages instead of bacon. When she returned I was informed that they could not do that and I would have to order my meal individually. With each item being $3, if I ordered separately my order the cost would have come to more than the price of the Breakfast for the Hungry.

After our orders were taken, we ended up waiting around 40 minutes, that’s right 40 minutes to be served. Although one of our group, who had arrived before we had, managed to order and receive his order in a timely fashion. After having waited far too long for our orders I went to check with the staff what the hold-up was. I received no definitive answer other than the food was on the way. Not a single staff member stopped what they were doing to deal with a customer issue; they may as well have ignored me.

When our breakfasts came and we were all less than impressed. My eggs (scrambled and well done) were not as asked for, the eggs were runny and very much undercooked, they may as well have just cracked two raw eggs on my toast. My eggs were entirely inedible so I returned them to the kitchen to remedy this, which was a mistake as that took another 25 minutes to do. The toast wasn’t exactly toast but rather a soggy bit of bread, the hash brown was certainly not a hash brown by any traditional definition, but a mash potato patty with peas, carrots and onions grilled on both sides and still cold in the middle and about as tasteless as eating a bit of paper. I received one grilled mushroom (and this is supposed to cost $3 on its own!), the only thing keeping me going was the tomato and sausages, which were average at best and the lemon and raspberry soda. This lackluster breakfast really struggles to live up to its moniker (Breakfast for the Hungry).

Southern Cross left a bitter taste in my mouth, with a seemingly untrained staff, expensive breakfasts that take forever to be served, they certainly do not accommodate customers (if someone wants to make a substitution on their meal that is within reason, let them!), the meal was tasteless, ill-prepared and horrendously expensive for what it was. If you are thinking of getting some breakfast in town then go elsewhere.     

Discuss this article on the forums. (6 posts)