Phone: (09) 828 6110
Open: 7am-4pm Monday-Wednesday, 7am-8pm Thursday-Friday, 8am-4pm Saturday
Cost: $59 for two adults and a toddler.
Online: rosebankkitchen.co.nz
SET UP & SITE
The Rosebank Rd industrial corridor has traditionally been poorly served by establishments offering jamon iberica, goat's feta and confit mushrooms. Similarly under-represented in the area have been places charging $18 for bacon and eggs. Thus, stepping into this establishment in this location is not so much an experience of the unexpected as it is a close encounter of the third kind. It's a big, cleanly designed open space of steel, pale wood and polished concrete, with a self-opening door.
SUSTENANCE & SWILL
Say what you want about bread gnocchi but, served at Rosebank Coffee and Kitchen with poached eggs, mushrooms, herbed cream cheese, confit lemon and thyme ($19.50), it's an embarrassment of richness. Innovative brunch dishes generally fall into two categories - overwrought and unnecessary - and this is neither. I ordered the overpriced bacon and eggs with a side of german hash ($18, plus $6.50 for the hash). The bacon was cut about a centimetre thick, which made it proportionately significantly less greasy, less mucky, more densely flavourful and more fun than your typical brunch bacon - fun is an under-rated concept in a brunch scene too often caught up in its own seriousness. Less fun were the two tiny semicircles of sourdough that sat on the very margins of the plate, looking fearfully inward at the yolky goodness of the poached eggs, against which they were so overmatched.
