Utzi Espresso

When ever you are in the Burnside Village, Portrush Rd, you will walk around or past the Utzi Espresso Café. This Café has very well arranged seating options. All done out in with white tables, comfortable chairs that are white with black backs. The counter is a white granite with black service areas, all creating a clean tidy appearance. We enjoyed a very nice coffee, along with a delicious snack while in the centre shopping. We found the service excellent, with a well organised service team enabling you to be attended to with out a long wait. Due to the location in the centre of the shopping area, across from Coles, the café is very busy. But we could not fault the service or food options. The coffee was smooth warm, with a pleasant lingering after taste. Well worth the visit.

This was my first visit to Utzi Espresso, I was happy with the service that I received from the staff and the attention I received, we spent some time at first looking at the options in the cabinet before making a decision, while looking and trying to make up our minds we were asked twice if we had worked out what we wanted, it was good to be checked in on a few times, otherwise we would have gone elsewhere.
We placed our order without a fuss and paid quite promptly, there weren’t any delays waiting for a EFTPOS machine to be available to process the payment and the staff gave us our drinks on the spot so we didn’t have to wait which was good because we were hungry and thin helped to tide us over until the food got to us.
The food didn’t take long to come either, after ordering and taking a seat out food was with us in probably a little over five minutes my roll was fresh and tasty and the open focaccia was served warm after being heated in a toaster oven, both meals were quite good and the quick service for a busy little café was a welcome change.
Only thing holding me back from giving five stars is that there were several vacant tables with dirty dishes on them that weren’t being cleared away, we had to move a coffee cup to another free table to clean ours up, as we were close to finishing up our meal other tables started to be cleared away.

Not as good as it used to be — staff not paying attention as people lined up to order — then no eye contact or rapport — how hard is it to be a bit more pro active and not just behave like a robot!!!
Won’t be going back anytime soon

When I join the queue I am 8^th in line, and very curious to see if the wait is worth it. The wait turns out to be about 3 minutes long, then I order a small iced coffee, and it is made immediately by one of the many swift an efficient staff buzzing around the busy shop.
Finding a seat is the more difficult part. People are pounce like vultures on any available seating. I find myself a spot on a bench to enjoy my beverage. Held in a standard latte cup, the coffee was pre-​cooled and beautifully sweet and strong. I enjoyed the generous scoop of icecream, but said no to the cream topping I could have had. I also appreciate that their iced coffees some in different sizes. This little one, for $ 3.70, was just the perfect size for a refreshment.
After some busy time spent shopping, and my last snack all but forgotten, I line up again, this time for one of their open grilled focaccias. I decide to try something a little different and go for the pumpkin one, with caramelised onions, rocket, roasted pumpkin, fetta and pine nuts, lightly toasted to further bring out the flavours. YUM. I couldn’t be more content with this generous snack (realistically, it’s lunch sized) as the flavours are rich and fresh. Well worth the $ 10.
It was a hard decision to make though — I’m coming back to try those quiches.