I love food: anyone who is my size only gets to this size if they do. It would be fair to say that I have fairly eclectic and limited tastes: but as the saying goes “I like what I like”.

Last night I ate at Sprout Cafe in Auchenflower, Brisbane. The immediate impression one gets when you walk into the place is that the room is small. It struck me that there looked like there was just one too many tables in the room: more about that later.

To the food first: for entree I ordered the onion soup with a cheese and crouton crust. It was nothing short of excellent. There was just enough onion without it being too overpowering. If I had to be critical I would say that there could have been a little more cheese in the crust but all in all I was left very content with the opening culinary salvo of the evening.

For main, and unusually for me, I stayed on the vegetarian side of things and ordered the Romana Gnocchi with stuffed capsicum. This was a delight, small but a delight. The gnocchi was perfect and melted in the mouth. The capsicum, which was roasted and stuff with lentils and mushrooms (though I can not be sure: am no gourmet as I have attested to above), I had been worried about but the flavours were perfectly mixed and made it the star of the dish.

Those of you who know me well will know that normally I eschew deserts. Having seen the words “pistachio” and “creme brûlée” in the same sentence on the desert menu, last night I made an exception. I was glad I did because, and I am saying this a lot in this review, it was excellent. The brûlée was perfect with the pistachio flavour more subtle than overpowering. The accompanying passionfruit sorbet was just that: an excellent accompaniment.

So, it is pretty clear from the foregoing, that I can not say a bad word about the food. If only that was the whole story though.

As excellent as the food was my experience at Sprout will forever be tarnished but the service we received. I will not get into chapter and verse; rather I summarise the service experience as follows:

1. Delays: whilst our entree and main order was taken with alacrity and our food came out swiftly, when it came time for dessert, despite our menus being provided some 5 minutes following the main, it then took 35 minutes for our dessert order to be taken.

2. Corkage: I love a BYO restaurant. I repeat: I love a BYO restaurant. What I do not love is paying corkage when the wait staff do not deign to pour drinks. In the end I ended up being our drinks waiter for the evening. To add insult to injury paying corkage for those who do not drink (as a teetotaller this issue arises often) is something I can not say impresses.

3. Because the room was over full our table seemed to be wedged against a wall, which lead to the waiter needing to hand our food to us rather than place it. Not a big issue for me but one that raised many comments around the table.

Now I am abundantly aware that in isolation any of these issues would not wreck the dining experience for many and to raise them individually could be considered petty. However, these factors in concert really took the gloss of the dining experience. The service questions were made all the more grating because it seemed like the restaurant was over staffed.

I will go back to Sprout: the food is too good to ignore BUT I will be going back on a Tuesday night when the restaurant is less busy (I presume).

Summary:

Food: 9 out of 10 Great menu, great food and chef must be congratulated.

Service: 4 out of 10 Poor: enough said as it may have just been an off night for them.

Price: 8 out of 10 Excellent value for money. The pricing structure is set so if you have two courses it is $55 or three course is $70. I love this idea and think the value for money was great. Corkage of $5 is not bad save for the issues noted above.

Overall: 6 out of 10.