Alphabet City Cafe, Westgarth, Victoria

Over the weekend, a friend and I decided to lunch at the Alphabet City Cafe located on High Street in Westgarth.

After finishing two laps of the tan (the jogging trail around Melbourne's botanical gardens), I thought I would treat myself to a late breakfast of poached eggs, ham, mushrooms with gluten free toast.

The meal was quite nice but most importantly, they served good coffee! :D

We chose to have our meals in the garden out back, where vines growing overhead provided natural coverage from the sun.

The staff were really friendly and attentive, especially a charming Scottish lass with a very strong accent.

There isn't a huge range of gluten free options but there are a few meals with bread that can be substituted at a small cost.

After lunch, I headed across the street to SACS cafe to grab some cake (it's one of the few allergy conscious cafes in Melbourne).

It use to be my favourite place to eat at because everything is gluten free and the food quality was quite high. Note, past tense.

The thing that keeps letting them down is the service. The staff are not very friendly. They just don't look like they want to be there and have no idea how to deal with customers.

Meals also consistently take a long time to come out.

After my last visit, I'd had enough. My friend and I were not greeted by staff even after standing around at the front for a while. We had to grab our own menus. It took them over 40 minutes to get us our meals and they were very badly cooked. I couldn't believe it took them so long even though the cafe was fairly empty of customers at 2pm.

My lasagne didn't look edible, it looked like it had been steamed a few times and microwaved before reaching me. The tomato sauce on top was dehydrated and the vegetables inside were like fossils. I took a few bites and gave up. My friend's chicken souvlaki was very soggy.

The prices are quite high for cafe grub and so there is a bit of an expectation of quality.

Getting back to that cake. I clearly had not learned my lesson because it turned out to be stale.

Such a shame as it's one of the few places I can walk into and not think too hard about what to eat.

If you're just after some takeaway food, they have lots of pies, sausage rolls, pasties and bread as well as good coffee. The cakes are a bit of a hit and miss.