Lyne Park Cafe

What do you do when you get to meet the inspiration of your inspiration? Well, in the world of Eat.Travel.Dive, we go for breakfast! Saturday was a very important day for Gaffa. His mentor in scuba, and long time friend from the UK came to Australia for a few hours (on a stop-over en route from New Zealand to England). They were holidaying in New Zealand, and for Jen to do an 85km run! In true ETD style we took Steve and his partner Jen to breakfast and on an express tour of Sydney.


We had planned to take them to Cafe Bondi in Rose Bay. I rang the reservation number on their website and left a message to book a table for Saturday morning. After parking in the Rose Bay wharf parking lot, we walked down New South Head Road to find the cafe. We found the Cafe Bondi sign, but no cafe. After asking a local where the cafe was, we were told that it had been closed for some time. Ooops! Needless to say, Steve and Jen found this hilarious, but I was embarrassed that I didn't know since the Cafe Bondi website was still functioning.

We decided to have breakfast at the Lyne Park Cafe next to the tennis courts at Rose Bay wharf. I'd noticed this cafe many a times during our Saturday tae kwon do lessons and while waiting for the boat to pick us up from the wharf for some diving, but never got a chance to eat there. Steve and I ordered at the counter and then sat upstairs with Gaffa and Jen.

Service was quick, and our juices, coffees and tea arrived promptly. Jen and Steve decided that I should blog about all the Big Breakfasts around the world that Gaffa eats, after hearing about the massive breakfast he had at Cafe Giulia last weekend. So, Gaffa had to order the Big Breakfast with poached eggs, bacon, chipolata sausages, tomatoes, potato rosti, mushrooms and rye toast . I ordered the Sweet Corn Fritters, with bacon, avocado, rocket, and tomato salsa. Jen had the BLAT and Steve had an omelette with salmon, avocado and mushrooms.

The sweet corn fritters were full of flavour, and paired well with the bacon, avocado and tomato salsa. The bacon was slightly overcooked though and too crispy for my liking. The tropical juice I ordered was very refreshing.

The bacon in the big breakfast seemed to be of a high quality but was slightly overcooked. The poached eggs were excellent, with runny yolks whilst maintaining a good texture. The chipolatas were flavoursome but a little small for a big breakfast. Gaffa's espresso coffee (short black) had a lovely taste and wasn't bitter like most espressos. 

I didn’t take any photos of Jen or Steve’s breakfast, as this was the first time I had eaten with them, and didn’t want to scare them off with my weird taking photos of food fetish! But both of their plates were empty so this must mean that they enjoyed their first Australian breakfast (or they were just really hungry after the 14 hours sitting in Christchurch airport!) 

After breakfast we took a walk down to the wharf to take some photos. Jen noticed this sign pointing to London. 

HOME!!!

Are they brothers? 

Jen sandwich!

Then we decided to take them on a quick tour to see the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. We parked at The Rocks, and walked around to the Overseas Passenger Terminal. There were no tourists around to take a group photo for us, so we improvised with the timer on my camera. 

Afterwards, we drove north over the Harbour bridge, through Neutral Bay - past Winnie Street (hehe) and then turned around at the Spit Bridge. After negotiating through the traffic in Mosman, we drove through the Harbour Tunnel, which was the closest we could get to taking Jen and Steve 'underwater'. Then we had to say our quick goodbyes at the airport, and look forward to seeing them soon in England..... ;-)

One of the many Gaffa stories that Steve shared with me was how Gaffa decided to go travelling. One Saturday Gaffa came into the Dive Connection and asked Steve and Danny their advice about whether he should go travelling now that he was a diving instructor, or stay in the UK and build his experience there. To which Steve responded, "travel, build your scuba experience and your experience with life, while you still can. Life is short". And Danny told Gaffa if he didn't do it now, he'd never do it. Gaffa took this advice a bit too seriously, and on the Sunday arrived back to the dive centre to inform his mentors that he had a ticket booked to Greece and scuba job lined up, his house was on the market and his car was on eBay, and "did anyone need a fridge?" Gaffa took this advice because he trusted his mentors, and was inspired by their stories of their own travels. 

So, who inspires you and what advice have you taken from them?

Lyne Park Cafe
600 New South Head Road
Rose Bay NSW 2029
02 9388 3834
Open for breakfast and lunch 7 days a week