Dome. 22 August

It was the morning after the federal election and we'd had a late night, but we were still determined to have a breakfast outing, if only to take our minds off the fascinating political situation the country had got itself into.

Now, if you've had a late night and are feeling a touch emotional (literally emotional, I'm not speaking metaphorically here) the last thing you want is a bad breakfast experience, isn't it? Sadly, we had a bad breakfast experience.

This was at the Dome in Vic Park. There is another being built in East Vic Park that isn't open yet. Dome is a huge chain. There are franchises everywhere, they all have the same menu, same decor, same everything, so there's not much point commenting on the look or feel of the place, although it is newly renovated, so the toilets are nice and swanky. They have a kids menu, which is a nice touch, but we didn't find it until after we ordered because it was just jammed in the middle of the table with a confusing number of many-paged menus.

I ordered bacon and eggs (fried, and they asked if I wanted them hard or soft, which is a nice touch) and an earl grey tea, he ordered pancakes (more on that later) and a flat white, the three year old ordered a croissant with apricot jam (more on that later too) and the baby did her normal thing. Being a Dome, you order at the counter, which is never a favourite thing for me, but that's not a huge issue.

First problem? Pancakes. "Sorry, yesterday there was a polling booth just around the corner and we had so many customers, we've run out of pancakes. I've sent a girl (hmmm Bron's sexist language alarm started ringing) to Woolworths, she should be back in ten minutes, do you mind waiting". Pardon? You've run out of pancakes?? As in you don't have flour, eggs, milk?? Odd. Surely someone would have noticed you were running low yesterday? Oh, and just as an aside, Woolworths doesn't open until 11am on a Sunday, so you'll be waiting much longer than ten minutes. Of course, being a polite person I didn't say any of those things other than the bit about Woolies not opening until 11am. So, we changed our order to bacon and eggs. They made us pay the difference too.

Then our drinks came and things looked good. Lovely earl grey tea. Leaf tea. In a pot. Happy day. The flat white was also good. Well done.

Then our food came. Well, some of our food. My bacon and eggs and the three year old's croissant with jam. Where is the other serving of bacon and eggs? It came a full ten minutes after the rest of the meals. The eggs were cooked well, but were cold. The bacon was crispy, but cold. The toast was chewy. This was the case with both orders of bacon and eggs. Not good.

The apricot jam we ordered with the croissant looked a bit odd. Kind of like it had passionfruit pips in it. In fact, a lot like that. I tasted it and indeed, it was passionfruit jam. Not that the three year old minded, he was in croissant heaven, but not what we ordered. The croissant itself was nice, but it was toasted, which seems unnecessary if you have a genuinely fresh croissant. Not quite sure about that.

So, friendly service, but some shortcomings, average food, disorganised kitchen. Not a good experience. It was cheap though, whole thing was less than $40, but not enough to recommend it.

Sad that the Dome was well attended, not full, but plenty of customers, while TLMP last week was almost empty but was a considerably better breakfast experience. The power of a big brand, perhaps?

Score. 2 eggs. Just. I'm considering 1 and a half, but the leaf tea was good.