Rivertown Cafe, Kaiapoi

We’d read... on Rivertown’s online page that it offered ‘‘real food for real people’’. And that it was very much a community-focused cafe owned by the Baptist Church. All these things appealed.

It was a... bright, crisp Kaiapoi Saturday morning and after skipping breakfast, a big brunch was looking like it could be the day’s highlight. The spacious open-plan cafe was mostly empty. It’s well used by groups and the community feel is underlined by the noticeboard and plenty of highchairs. Profits go back into Kaiapoi. So lots of feelgood going on.

The menu... for the cooked food was basic but keeping it real. For lunch there are things like chicken tenderloins, fish and chips, a beef burger, and a tempting lambs fry and bacon – but wandering around Kaiapoi had put us in an All Day Breakfast mood. That menu had cafe classics like pancakes, bacon, sausage and so on. We chose The Rookie – hash brown, eggs, bacon and optional tomato ($15) and a seriously loaded Eggs Benedict with salmon and spinach ($20).

The egg problem... The menu says you can have free range eggs if you ask but they cost more. It doesn’t say how much more. That must put most people off. We asked for free range anyway, but the waitress said there were none. All very odd. Rivertown Cafe should go free range all the way and drop the extra cost silliness.

Unfortunately the egg problem had a part 2. Both my battery cage poached eggs were hard boiled. There wasn’t a drop of orange yolk to flow gloriously over the salmon and wilted spinach. One of The Rookie’s eggs had flowing yolk, the other was also overdone.

Overall though... Apart from the eggs, the dishes were what we’d hoped for. Straightforward, tasty and generous. There was heaps of smoked salmon and spinach, and while the hollandaise sauce was commercial it was as an eggs bennie should be. The mostly raw chunk of tomato with The Rookie was so retro it almost passed muster... but no. Don’t do that.

If you go... tell them to get off the fence, go free range eggs, and take them out a minute earlier when poaching.