Miss Maud Karrinyup

I had the big breakfast and a mug of coffee. Coffee was lovely but the food average. Mushrooms were cold, whites on the poached egg were a little raw for me (pet hate of mine) and the hashbrowns were a strange flavour.
Service was good, the waitress was very friendly and most apologetic when I mentioned the mushrooms.

Very poor service. We were one of four tables occupied, yet it took them a very long time to bring out our food… One of the meals didn’t come until after we asked where it was (the cook forgot to make it). What did come out was all at different times. Also found it very cold in there but I suppose that is dependent on the shopping centre aircon. The food that came out was nice, albeit cold by the time I ate it.

I really tried hard to find something likeable about Miss Mauds .Back in the day Miss Maud had a rockstar status. I remember as a kid being amazed at their buffet in the city. Nowdays the food is «meh», the service «meh, the décor «meh» and the ambience «meh». To sum it up it is «meh». The pastries used to be half decent. I loved their vanilla slice, this trip is was bland and dry. This place is no different to many large national food chains.

Miss Mauds is another one of those sleight-​of-​hand coffee places, a little like Dôme, designed to make you think you are in some irreducibly singular coffee shop in Vienna or Paris. Of course, the real impression one gets its precisely the opposite, and not only because you’re sitting across from a Big W and are more than aware that Europe is a very long way away indeed.
I’m not sure how places like succeed like they do. People, it seems, do not have the same qualms that I do about such strikingly false evocations of the Old World. But surely they must have qualms about pre-​made pastries that taste bland and pro forma? Which resemble the pastries available at every other Miss Mauds, without any hint of differentiation between them, because they were all made according to the same not-​to-​be-​deviated-​from recipe and there is none? Surely they must? No? My bad, then. At least the coffee is halfway drinkable, though if I had a choice I would almost always rather head around to Café 34 instead.