Sun­day would have been a love­ly day to have brunch at Sweet Moth­er’s Kitchen, except pret­ty much every oth­er per­son in Welling­ton had the same idea, and we were told it was going to be a 45 minute wait. We decid­ed we’d ven­ture fur­ther afield, and made the mis­take of head­ing out to Ori­en­tal Parade, and Beach Baby­lon.

When we got there, it was real­ly busy, but we thought sure­ly it would be less than the 45 min­utes wait at SMK, because there were free tables out­side. It was a bit breezy, so we were keen to sit inside — since there were no free tables they offered us one out­side and told us they’d give us the first free table inside. So we hopped up on stools crammed in the cor­ner, and con­sult­ed the menu. Lots of things sound­ed tasty on the menu. K was hap­py that they had Fox­ton Fizz. I con­tem­plat­ed order­ing a Pink Princess, which was fizzy rasp­ber­ry and vanil­la ice cream, but I decid­ed to pre­tend to be a grown up and order a lat­te bowl instead. So we wait­ed for a wait­ress, and wait­ed, and wait­ed. Even­tu­al­ly one came up and told us that she could­n’t take our food order right now, because the kitchen was slammed, but she’d be back to take our drinks order. Seri­ous­ly? I appre­ci­ate the place was busy, but sure­ly it is the job of the staff to man­age the work­flow. If the kitchen was­n’t ready for our orders (which seems strange), the wait staff should still take them, and hold onto them, and let us know approx­i­mate­ly how long a wait we could expect.

Five min­utes lat­er anoth­er wait­ress asked if we’d ordered already, and took our drink orders, clear­ing our menus away but not tak­ing our food orders. J’s diet coke and K’s Fox­ton Fizz arrived smart­ly, but while I was wait­ing for my large lat­te, we noticed anoth­er cou­ple arrive and get seat­ed inside. Umm, we were promised that table, K told a wait­ress. There was clear­ly a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion hap­pen­ing with the staff. My cof­fee came out — a small lat­te. I said that I ordered a large, the wait­ress looked con­fused. Anoth­er one came along and said “well this one is made, so take this and we’ll give you anoth­er one lat­er,” in a par­tic­u­lar­ly grumpy man­ner.  What a way to make a cof­fee extra bit­ter. I order my lattes large because I like them milky and less strong. Two cups would put me over the edge of caf­feine intake, but I should­n’t have wor­ried because of course I was nev­er offered the extra cof­fee. Oh, and I was charged for the large but by that stage I could­n’t be both­ered fight­ing over the extra 50 cents.

Even­tu­al­ly we were told we could order our food now, and I went for creamy bal­sam­ic mush­rooms and halou­mi with a side of kran­skies, J went for the fish’n chips of the day (no word on what the fish was) and K ordered a savoury scone and a sweet muf­fin from their range of counter food. 10 min­utes lat­er or so, we spot­ted a table inside that had opened up, and asked if we could move there. The wait­ress said we could, but asked us to wait while she cleaned it up. Mean­while anoth­er wait­ress came out with K’s muf­fin and scone on sep­a­rate plates. Not want­i­ng to have to jug­gle water and cof­fees and drinks, we asked if she could deliv­er them to the table in the cor­ner where we were mov­ing to. She said she had no idea what we were talk­ing about, and told us to just take the food.

Final­ly we were inside where it was warm. K fin­ished her pal­lid scone and her appar­ent­ly very aver­age muf­fin. My cof­fee was long gone. Still no sign of our food though. We checked our watch­es — we’d ordered 45 min­utes before. I man­aged to catch the eye of a wait­ress to ask where our food was, and she asked me who had tak­en our order. Nev­er a good sign. I said I was­n’t sure, because of our jum­bled ser­vice. A guy who I think was the man­ag­er came over and said there was a 45 minute wait. Now they tell us! But still, we’d wait­ed that long and I told him so. He said he’d go see what had hap­pened. I decid­ed to use the mag­ic trick of going to the bath­room to make the food arrive, and was inter­cept­ed by him to say that ours was lit­er­al­ly the next order up. Which sounds kind of sus­pi­cious­ly like they’d lost our orders to me, since we’d seen the peo­ple seat­ed after us get their orders already. But any­way, five min­utes lat­er, we had our food. The fish and crin­kle-cut chips looked tasty enough. My halou­mi was good, my toast unbut­tered, and if I can slip in one more com­plaint, I know the mush­rooms were billed as being bal­sam­ic, but they were just too bal­sam­i­cy, if you know what I mean. All up, I think we spent an hour and a half at Beach Baby­lon, which is an hour of our lives we’ll nev­er get back. I know that real­ly we should have reg­is­tered our com­plaints before we left, but it did­n’t appear that there was any­one there who would have lis­tened. I’ve had very indif­fer­ent ser­vice there at lunch before, and thought I’d give them anoth­er chance, but after this deba­cle, I won’t be both­er­ing with their day­time ser­vice ever again though.