Duo
Bird seed crackers where a rosti should be, frosty staff who'd make Elsa feel welcome, and a benedict that's exactly as good as the sum of its thoroughly mediocre parts.
Scores
Woke up on sunday with a serious craving for benedicts. Cumberbatch is sadly married so the wifey and i ventured out to a cafe called duo in Birkenhead point to see if we could find a satisfactory alternative. I ordered the $28 benedict as I wondered if birds understood foreshadowing.
Honestly if atmosphere was a pissing contest, then duo was a hydroholic. The staff were about as frosty as duolingo is clingy. Wouldn't be surprised if i walked into head office and found the ice queen sitting out back. Sat there feeling bad about my existence as staff squeezed their way through the narrow walking aisle behind me.
A time later breakfast arrived. And it was in this moment that i came to understand why we don't call a benedict mere eggs on toast with a side of bacon topped with hollandaise. It's because a benedict always comes with a little extra magic - where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Yea well not in this case. Instead of a rosti (god knows why cause i saw rostis on the menu elsewhere), they plated my eggs on bird seed crackers. Might as well have grown a beak and shat on someone cause at least then someone else might get some good out of this experience. This eggs with bacon on crackers with hollandaise was exactly about as good as the sum of its parts. The bacon was well cooked, but tough instead of crunchy. The eggs were the equivalent of a well done steak. The hollandaise was just about the only redeeming quality of the meal.
If only i'd have grown wings so i could fly away in search of a better eggs benedict. Instead i sat there, got through my meal in about 4 bites, and 50% of that time was spent gnawing away on tough chewy bacon.
Hoping the name duo is some kind of yin-and-yang symbolism whereby this evil exists so that some other entangled cafe may live to be a paragon of brilliance.
If you're there for a tasteless grammable moment intended solely to inspire mimetic desire in others, then you'll fit right in. the coffee was so unremarkable i can't even remember it.
Pricey too! Benedict was a measly 4/10, atmosphere a contentious 3/10 and coffee is a ?/10. Final arbitration reveals a madrosti_ score of 3/10.