Brunch review: Woodworks, Avondale

SET UP & SITE

Woodworks had been open only eight months when it was gutted by an accidental fire in July 2015. It didn't reopen until November last year. It's in a prominent but unlikely location right on a major, largely pedestrian-free, intersection, where Great North Rd becomes Avondale's main strip. In a tight hospitality market, where the floor size to table quantity ratio can offer a crucial guide to an owner's profitability, Woodworks offers an accountant-troubling amount of space and sense of freedom.

SUSTENANCE & SWILL

The breakfast bruschetta was eggs benedict with chopped tomatoes and avocado, while the breakfast burger was bacon, eggs and rosti in a burger bun. This sort of cute marketing of breakfast is a savvy sales play in a crowded brunch market, but its long-term success depends on delivery of a quality eating experience. The bruschetta was nicely balanced, with a good thick swirl of bacon under the hollandaise, and the pile of chopped tomato and avocado spilling off to the side offered a freshness spike through the delicious fats. The burger bun was thick but light, and although there is a fair question to be asked as to whether potato should ever be served on white bread, it was fairly delicious, although the relentlessness of the grease eventually started to weigh a little heavy.

SERVICE & OTHER STUFF

The waiter took our order without a notepad, then repeated it back to us wrongly. We corrected him, and he went away to the kitchen with an updated wrong version, so my wife got the full-sized burger rather than the half-size she had ordered. We told him about it and he charged us only for the half, but it was all so unnecessary and for what? A waiterly flamboyance? Or worse, laziness? My wife looked up user reviews of Woodworks online and discovered their notepad-free method had yielded inaccurate results before.