Breakfast at Pieno, Surry Hills

Hello, dear readers! I hope your Easter long weekend is off to a wonderful start. Yesterday in Sydney we enjoyed absolutely glorious weather, and it looks set to continue by the looks of things this morning! Beautiful blue skies and plenty of sunshine. To mark Easter I wanted to share something Easter themed with you all and so set about making Hot Cross Cookies - a Donna Hay recipe featured in last weekend's edition of the Daily Telegraph.. well, I'm sad to say they were an epic fail (sorry Donna, I've got to be honest here) and I saw little point sharing a recipe with you all that I myself will certainly not be repeating. Yes, hot cross cookies is a cute concept, but the aftertaste of the baking powder was very unpleasant. If I get time in the next few days I might attempt tweaking the recipe and will share with you all if I have any success.

Anyway, instead of Hot Cross Cookies here is a quick post on a place we went to breakfast yesterday. It's called Pieno, and is located on Crown Street in Surry Hills. If there's one thing this funky cafe has bucketloads of, it's atmosphere. It's cool, it's modern, and for a cafe in Surry Hills, there's certainly more than your average amount of seating. I love the splashes of red in the decor too with the chairs and the water bottles - a great vibrant touch.

We started off with coffees ($3.50 each) and they are delicioussss -seriously the best coffee I have had in a long time!

For breakfast, Mr L had the Vegie Breakfast ($16.50) with poached eggs, roast tomatoes, rosti, mushrooms and spinach with toast. The eggs were poached to perfection, but unfortunately the rosti were more or less deep-fried balls of mash.

And for me, I ordered the Breakfast bruschetta with mushrooms and garlic oil ($11). I can usually find something positive to say about a dish, even if I'm not that keen on it, but this was a very disappointing dish. The mushrooms were watery and rubbery.. so I end up eating the toast with a little rocket. In such situations, I am always a little embarrassed to complain about my dish... what do you do when faced with culinary disappointment while eating out..?

Such a shame Pieno, such a shame! I so very much wanted to rave about this place .. especially in light of all the positive reviews online on sites like Eatability. Perhaps I just got very unlucky (?) I love the atmosphere, the service is fantastic, and the coffee ***amazeballs***, but the food really fell short of the mark. A bit of a pity, but I would definitely return if I was looking for somewhere for a good coffee in the area.

Pieno
285A Crown St
Surry Hills, NSW
(02) 8354 1303