The Caff, Broken Hill

 Mocha (large, $4.5)

We've been told that most of the food in Broken Hill is pretty good- the reason being that the town is so small that anything that isn't can't last for too long. We haven't been here for long, but we have tried three restaurants/cafes so far and are yet to find one we don't like.

Right across from Broken Hill hospital, where we are based for my placement is The Caff, which we'd been hearing rave reviews about since the day we got here. So naturally, we had to make time for a visit to check it out.

 Red Wine Beef Pie with salad, $10

Their coffee is apparently very good, but not being much of a coffee drinker myself, I can't comment on that, though I did enjoy my mocha which was a good balance between the sweetness of the chocolate and bitterness of the coffee. 

The menu mostly consists of sandwiches and breakfast/brunch options, but as exciting as they seemed, we'd been having eggs for a couple of days so had to give that a miss. We've had 'eating a meat pie in the outback' on our list of things to do whilst we're in Broken Hill, so when we saw the homemade pie display in the cafe, we were sold. 

 Red Wine Beef Pie 

There's about six different varieties of pies when we visited, each of which sounded delicious but I settled for the classic red wine and beef pie. It was surprisingly differently to how I'd imagined it, as it tasted really fresh, as there was quite a bit of tomato in the filling and not an overly strong red wine flavour. 

The housemade tomato chutney it was served with was also great, with the freshness of tomatoes and a little bit of sweetness from the addition of sultanas. It was just a bit unfortunate that it tasted so similar to the filling that it didn't compliment it too well, but my friend did enjoy hers with her pie! We also quite enjoyed the shell as they use puff pastry for the base and the top, which was nice, buttery and flakey. 

Tandoori Chicken Salad 

The tandoori chicken salad comes with a generous serve of tasty tandoori chicken. There's no dressing in this salad, as there's plenty of spice in the chicken sauce to flavour the whole salad. The pairing of tandoori chicken with the pearl couscous was quite interesting with the couscous playing the role of the rice I'd normally have with the chicken, except softer, creating much contrast between with the texture of the meat.

Chicken and Leek Pie with Greek Salad

The chicken and leek pie is equally as delicious as the beef one, though not as leeky as we'd imagined. The greek salad was a little bit of a disappointment though, as its serving size was rather small, and the cheese was a little too hard and salty.

Quiche with Linguine Salad ($10)

We're back the next week to try their quiches which we heard were pretty good too. Similar to the pie deal, you can get yourself a slice of  quiche with a side salad for just $10. The quiche is quite tasty, with a nice smooth eggy filling, and a nice mix of bacon, spinach and tomato inside although we would have preferred it to be heated up a little more. There's only two salads on display today, so I chose the linguine salad.  It's quite similar to my pesto pasta, except with linguine instead and served cold. It's definitely enjoyable, although I would have liked a little more spinach leaves so that it's more like a salad!

With its location being so convenient for us, we'll definitely be back over the next couple of weeks to sample more of their menu!