On our way to Sydney for the long weekend, my partner and I stopped at Grandma’s Little Bakery in Collector for brunch. It is about 40 minutes away from Canberra and located at the Fedra Olive Grove just off the Federal Highway. There is outdoor seating available, but as it was a windy Saturday, everyone was indoors.
The indoor seating area is quite large. I love how each table has a cute red polka dot teapot with a plant growing inside, and the table number inserted as a flag.
Looking at the menu, they have a few types of shakshuka available. My partner ordered the beef bolognaise shakshuka ($17.50). I thought this was tasty – eggs were runny and the beef mince was yummy. Just like bolognaise. Though the menu states there is chilli in the shakshuka, we couldn’t taste any. The sauce wasn’t as thick as I’d like it but it was still good to mop up the sauce with the soft white bread.
Beef bolognaise shakshuka
I ordered the beef shakshuka ($17.50) not realising it didn’t have any sauce with it. Ah well. It was literally just beef mince with onion and eggs. It wasn’t too bad with the runny eggs mixed through but definitely not as flavoursome after tasting the bolognaise. There were also bits of eggshell that had to be picked out (or swallowed if missed).
Beef shakshuka
Close up of the beef shakshuka
Service wasn’t that great – the young waitress taking our order didn’t realise there were 2 types of beef shakshuka on the menu (but perhaps they recently added that on?) Our coffees didn’t arrive until halfway through our meals. Towards the end of the meal, we could both taste a tinny metallic element, probably due to the shakshuka being cooked in the thin metal pan. That wasn’t very pleasant.
Grandma’s Little Bakery have a cute little shop at the back, selling all sorts of yummy things – cookies, lollies, spices and herbs, olives, dips, shakshuka sauce, goulash, lentils, vinegars and oils.
There is a little tasting table set up where customers can help themselves to bread to taste the various oils/vinegars they sell, plus an assortment of biscuits to sample. I quite liked the pistachio biscotti and muesli cookies.
There are hot beef and vegetarian pies at the counter. A small fridge also sells different types of cheesecakes. I ended up buying a pack of muesli cookies ($9.90) for the road. Yum! I wanted to try the pistachio butter cookies as well, but at nearly $10 per container, I thought one would be enough.
Cons: my partner and I weren’t very impressed with this place due to the slow and what seemed like inexperienced service, the broken bits of eggshells found in my beef shakshuka, the tinny metallic taste from the pan, the small serving of shakshuka at $17.50 was a tad expensive, the coffee was weak and brought out late, and the small container of cookies/biscuits at $9.90 each is also very expensive.
Pros: The beef bolognaise shaksuka was tasty until we hit the tinny metallic taste towards the end, the little store is pretty cool with an assortment of products – they even had carob molasses, free samples of the oils/vinegar and biscuits are a great way to sell their products, the muesli cookies are yummy, and it’s only a 40min drive from Canberra so for those that don’t want a maccas breakfast, Grandma’s is pretty close.
Foodgasm 6.5/10
