Bay Road Pantry

I stumbled across this café while driving up Bay Road on my way to Claremont Quarter on a Friday lunchtime during school holidays. I didn’t know this place existed, and decided it was worth trying out, especially since I didn’t really want a busy, noisy lunch with my children.
I found on street parking a short distance away, and on first glance it looked to be a popular place for a coffee, with several people chatting over a coffee.
There was an interesting variety of food on display and written up on the chalk board. I was initially served by a younger waitress who seemed new and unsure about the costs as she started ringing up items on the cash register. She consulted another lady (the manager?) who took over entering my order.
The cost for lunch and drinks for me and my 2 primary school aged daughters staggered me: $ 79! I knew this was Claremont rather than my locale south of the river, but even so, I didn’t think that could be right, when similar orders tended to cost around $ 50.
So as we waited for our meals, I looked up the prices and calculated them for myself:
— $ 6.50 for a meat pie plus $ 6 for a small side salad (the first waitress had asked me what salad I wanted with the meat pie; she had made it sound like it was included, but I found out it wasn’t, it was an extra. For the tiny side that came with it, it wasn’t worth it!)
— 1 x iced coffee + 2 x iced chocolate: $ 6 each (iced mocha would have been $ 6.50)
— bruschetta: $ 13
— pancakes: $ 16
I worked out that I had been overcharged by $ 20!
I went back to the counter and queried the cost with the owner, showing her my calculation, and she immediately refunded me $ 20 cash from the till. It appears that she had entered all our meals in to the cash register, not taking into account that the first girl had already started ringing some of them up.
The food didn’t take long to come out, and it was delicious — even my fussy children mentioned how yummy it was.

This little cut suburban café serves a great coffee! Open Sunday too!