Pod Food

Name: Podfood
Type: Restaurant. Café. Modern Australian.
Location: Pialligo
Meal: Breakfast
Food et: Pancakes
Cost: $16.00

Ah. Picturesque Pialligo. For those of you unfamiliar, Pialligo is a random little “rural suburb” in Canberra, just near the airport, full of nurseries and plant shops. It’s where Canberra’s green-thumbed community converge on weekends.

In the last few years, the nurseries have cottoned on to Canberra’s booming breakfast and brunch culture and have started up cafés and restaurants amongst their bulbs, seedlings and pots (there are a lot of pots).

A friend (D) and I wanted to catch up for brunch out at Pialligo’s Podfood. We’d heard good thing and we were keen to try it. Only, they don’t do brunch…

Podfood is open for breakfast on weekend mornings from 8:30am to 10am and then lunch from 12pm. I’m sorry? Where is the 10.30am breakfast for the lazy people, huh??? I was pretty disappointed, not going to lie. I like my lazy Saturday morning breakfast/brunch to be as late as possible, to get in as much sleep as possible!

We decided to make the sacrifice and booked a table for 9am. Oh, the things we do for food.

Podfood is stupidly cute. A rustic, cottage looking, building, painted a welcoming blue and yellow, surrounded by a courtyard and a deck, with plants and flowers at their borders. The main room is fairly basic, but nice, bright and inviting.

I decided that I had a sweet tooth that morning, which is rare for me (I’m more of a savoury gal), so I decided to get the pancakes. D got the eggs Benedict with salmon. I also ordered a Chai Latte and D ordered a Mocha.

The food was cooked and on our table in no time at all, very efficient but probably due to the fact that there wasn’t that many people in the restaurant. The cold weather drives people away from places like Pialligo; if it was warmer it would be booming!

First let me get the negative out of the way – the drinks. D’s Mocha was cold and weak (but she likes them pretty strong). My Chai Latte was also cold and not overly flavourful. I stuck with water after that…

But now on to the good – the food! The pancakes were so fantastic. Warm, fluffy and the perfect size - I didn’t end up eating so much I wanted to spew (which happens often to me with yummy things). The pancakes had a walnut and maple ice cream on top, which was creamy and sweet, and the plate was drizzled with walnuts and chucks of pear compote. It all just worked so beautifully together.

D’s Eggs Benedict with salmon ended up being Eggs Benedict with spinach – as the salmon had not yet been delivered for the day. I felt like commenting that that was because they opened so EARLY. I’m still suffering from lack of sleep a week later, you see.

D said her eggs were cooked perfectly; a good amount of runniness and the spinach was cooked well. She was extremely happy with her meal too.

We ended up sitting around after we finished the meal just chatting and killing time, and as a testament to the great service, they let us stay as long as we wanted. All I had to do was pick up my handbag and our waitress grabbed the cheque for us, we didn’t have to ask. She was polite, happy and really attentive for the entire meal. Just fantastic service, you really could not ask for anything more.

The sun had come out, so after we’d finished with breakfast, we went for a walk around the nurseries and pot plant shops. I found a tea cup pot plant that WILL be mine. When I have more money…

D strutting her stuff amongst the pots.


Verdict: All they need to do is improve on their drinks and I think Podfood could really become a “must-go/do” Pialligo landmark.

Rating: 3.5/*****