Portside Bar and Brasserie

By BRENDA WARD for canvas

When the gleam of gazillionaires' gold is gone, you'd expect the Viaduct Basin's eateries to be ghost cafes, haunted by the memories of America's Cups past. And you'd expect the most affected to be Portside, in Halsey St, where you can still almost hear the distant hoot of Denis Conner shouting his sailors to brunch, or the subdued whispers of the boys from the black boat hiding their misery as their boats failed left and right.

I expected to find a sad, hollow kind of cafe, overlooking a bare basin, emptied of its boats as if mum had been by after the boys got out of the bath.

I can tell you one thing, though. Parking is fantastic, and Anne and I pulled up right outside Portside on a perfect Viaduct Sunday to find there were plenty dining this day, and even a few of the nautical kind, tucking into fish burgers and piles of fries. For brunch.

See the Viaduct from a table on the pavement here, and it's a different place. Looking across the water to the elegant and European-looking apartments with their chunky timber shutters, and residents taking coffee on their decks, you can ponder what life by the harbour could be, brunching at Portside every day.

Although the smells from the sailors' hearty breakfasts were tempting, Anne and I had passed an enticing range of counter cakes and we were determined not to leave without making an impact there. So we chose a lighter brunch that would leave us space to be wicked later.

My eggs Florentine ($13.50) was a twist on the more commonplace eggs Benedict - poached eggs on pide bread, spinach and bacon, topped with a rather scant drizzle of hollandaise sauce. The seeds encrusted in the deliciously toasted pide bread added a savoury Mediterranean flavour dimension.

Anne's French toast ($13) made me insanely jealous and I had to steal a bite. It was an almost sculptural confection of slabs of french bread, vanilla-glazed, with banana and grilled bacon, the whole artwork drenched in maple sauce.

Our meals came promptly, but the crowd was thinning by then. I noticed the nautical lads behind us had waited quite a bit longer for theirs, when the cafe was at its busiest. The cakes were as divine as they looked. I had the apple shortcake with its meltingly lovely latticed shortbread pastry top, and Anne had the lemon cake, adding a dangerously large dollop of cream (both $4). I'm going back for the baked lemon and raspberry layered cheesecake.

With all the excitement of the cake experience, the waitress forgot about our coffees and we were nearly finished our cakes by the time they came, hastily thrown together and not hot enough.

But even that couldn't take away from a leisurely and delicious brunch, and who needs gazillionaires anyway?

Parking: Now, anywhere, even outside the door if you're lucky.

Ambience: The nautical and the naughty.

* Read more about what's happening in the world of food, wine, party places and entertainment in canvas magazine, part of your Weekend Herald print edition.