Sheinkin café

Sheinkin cafe
3 Lorne Street, Auckland
Ph: (09) 303 4301

This is the first time I've ever been to the Sheinkin cafe; in fact I've never even heard of it before. It was just randomly picked as my friend and I were looking about for a place to dine. Tucked smugly near the edge of Lorne St, I picked the Sheinkin cafe because I was simply sick of eating cheap Asian food and junk like chips, chocolate, pies, etc. Unlike the places where I normally dine, Sheinkin was 2 times more expensive, but I was willing to try anything on their menu. The hardest part in itself was picking one dish out of a whole variety of dishes; this took me about 7 minutes to decide, and I eventually chose the eggs benedict with bacon ($15.50).

To my great comfort the food hygiene was an A grade, unlike one place I dined at about a year ago which had an abysmal food hygiene grade of D. Some of the tables needed to be thoroughly wiped down, many of the tables were wobbly and everyone was crammed together like a pack of sardines - if I wanted to, I could have easily reached out with my fork and stole a bite of someone elses fish fillet without leaning over. The surroundings were plain and white; nothing special. The atmosphere inside was unpleasant, it was hot, noisy and crammed, so my friend and I decided to take a table outside, and much to our dismay the tables outside had much more 'wobble' than the ones inside. The service was exceptional, the waitress was attentive yet not intrusive; regularly visiting us to see if we were enjoying our meal. And I had the honour of having the chef personally handing me the eggs benedict with bacon in less than 10 minutes with a big, bright smile and the words "enjoy your meal".

To my surprise, the dish I had in front of me was a generous serving; 2 large pieces of toasted bagels, fresh vegetables of shaved carrot, lettuce, rockets and red cabbage, 2 pieces of shoulder bacon, 2 poached eggs covered in creamy hollandaise sauce, seasoned with various spices and garnished with small slices of fresh chives.
It is often said that we eat with our eyes first, this certainly was the case with the eggs benedict with bacon that I was presented with. Many onlookers walking past were staring at it wishing that they were in my position. One big bite gave me two words to describe this dish; perfectly balanced.

The hollandaise sauce had the correct proportion; there wasn't too much, or too little. The common mistake that many cooks and chefs make when making the hollandaise is that they make it either too sour giving it an unpleasant taste, or too creamy, making the sauce bland and tasteless; the hollandaise on my eggs benedict with bacon was at the right balance - the sourness added a punch to the flavour, the creaminess made the dish smooth and savouring. The eggs were perfectly poached; neither underdone, nor overdone, as I stabbed my knife in the egg the yolk came oozing out like thick, sticky lava waiting to be tasted. The bacon was not undercooked, nor was it overcooked which would make the shoulder bacon dry and feel somewhat leather-like in the mouth. The dish as a whole was not too salty, and not too bland; instead of salting the dish, the chef(s) actually added to the flavours by lightly sprinkling pepper and other spices. The creaminess and greasiness of the bacon and hollandaise sauce was neutralised by the fresh vegetables added with the dish.

However, the one downside to the dish was the toasted bread. The bread was slightly underdone and plainly toasted. This made the bread chewy and difficult to eat, also difficult to slice up with the folk and knife, the wobbly tables didn't help in the slightest either; I probably spent most of the time trying to cut away at the bread. This could have been avoided simply by toasting the bread a bit longer, making it more crunchy and easier to cut up. I personally would have pan fried the bread in a little bit of butter. Many people don't know that when eating, crunching sounds stimulates the appetite making food more enjoyable, I got crunches coming from the fresh vegetables, but they would be nowhere near as satisfying as the crunch you would get from things such as toasted bread.

The average person would have come out feeling absolutely stuffed. However, being an insanely massive eater I could have had two plates before feeling full - don't let this put you off going there, I am after all a bloody massive eater; I once gobbled down 12 big Ben's mince and cheese pies all within an hour.
To those of you who have never been to the Sheinkin cafe/restaurant before, I highly recommend you to dine there, or at least try the eggs benedict with bacon. It may be pricey and its wobbly tables and its bad atmosphere may have prevented it from receiving a perfect score, but the near perfection if its dishes will help you overlook those problems and have you coming back hungry for more. I know for sure that I'm coming back.

Rating: 4/5