Devon on Danks

Late last year, the infamous Devon Café in Surry Hills opened another café in the hip suburb of Waterloo, called Devon on Danks. We tried their food at the end of last year, and had fond memories of the food. So on a gloomy Easter Monday, we went back to this café to try to relive our previous pleasant experience.

We arrived at the café around noon, and there was already a line waiting outside. We waited for around 15 minutes, which was a reasonable time to wait.

We requested to sit on a table outside the café, and when we sat down on the table, we noticed that the table was not cleaned at all, with food scraps left from the previous diners. Two wait staff came by, one to give us the menu and cutlery, and one to take our orders, but both failed to clean the table for us. We were forced to clean the table ourselves with the serviettes that were given to us. Not a great start. Tsk tsk…

We ordered a coffee each to start our meal, and the coffees were pretty standard. We then proceeded to order three plates to share.

Since we already tried their infamous Breakfast with the Sakuma’s ($25) previously, we order three dishes that we have not tried before.

Spanner Crab Pasta ($28)

This was a homemade egg yolk pasta, with spanner crab, cherry tomatoes, garlic and parsley. There were also some beans thrown in which provided a good textural contrast to the other ingredients. The taste of this dish was unfortunately very one dimensional – full of tomato flavours and lacking in flavours from the crab and other ingredients. It has failed our expectations.

Dr Seuss’s Green Egg and Ham ($20)

This dish consisted of thick cut bacon, crispy potato, 63 degrees egg, green tomato ketchup, pea puree, soy beans, pea tendrils and jus. The green eggs were soft and silky and nicely flavoured. However, the rest of the dish was not as enjoyable. The potato was crispy but overly salty making it inedible. The bacon had a good smoky flavour but was again overly salty. Dr Seuss’s words seems appropriate to describe this dish:

“Do you like green eggs and ham?

I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.

I do not like green eggs and ham.”

The Manny P Burger ($19)

This burger was filled with annatto spiced fried chicken fillet, chilli mayo, fragrant herbs and pickles, with a side of chips. The chips were thickly cut, crunchy and well-seasoned. The burger was delicious as the chicken fillet was juicy and soft and the mayo provided a good kick to the burger. The fresh pickles and herbs provided some light refreshing flavour and contrasted well with the spiciness from the chicken and mayo. A nice dish.

Overall, this experience at Devon on Danks was a disappointing one. Our pleasant memories from our previously experience has now been shattered. We were so unhappy with two of the dishes that we did not even want to order their infamous desserts, Danks-in-Donut ($7) or Cronnies ($6.50). Maybe we were just unlucky by going to this café on the wrong day, but this experience has really questioned us whether we should ever visit this place again.

Devon on Danks

Website: http://www.devoncafe.com.au/

Address: 2 Danks Street, Waterloo, Sydney, NSW 2017

Phone: (02) 9698 7795

Opening hours: Mon to Fri 8am to 4pm, Sat to Sun 8am to 3.30pm

Accepts MasterCard, Visa and American Express (for purchases over $10, with surcharge for Amex)