Taste Baguette

Taste Baguette & Grill
Darling Harbour, Sydney
Dec 14, 2013
NEGATIVE

Meh. Wagyu burger was enjoyable but everything else was terrible. The fries were frozen and the service was mediocre.
This is actually a touristy chain restaurant so you can’t expect much.

Service here is no-​nonsense and they don’t muck around, which is great if you’ve got time pressure. Coffee is pretty good — better than others in this centre, so I will come here again. Thank you.

Taste Baguette. I stopped by here for Coffee after my meal at Mr Wong. The coffee was so so. The reason I say it’s so so was because it wasn’t made with condense milk. I grew up in Southern California and the Vietnamese coffee is made with condense milk. It will have you running circles like a meth head trying to fix his car at 4 am.
However, it’s a nice little café for a quick bite, cheap and to hydrate yourself from the strenuous shopping. The staff was really nice and helpful. I think Aussies are just nice and in general. I was a bit disappointed I didn’t get an «F off, wanker» from any Aussies during my visit.

OMG I dont know whats going on with the croissants here but they are freaking amazing!

I used to be a regular at Taste Baguette when I worked in the Market St/​QVB area and I went there so often, the staff knew my order by heart!
It’s rare to find a good croissant anywhere these days (I once ate a «croissant» which was called a croissant but tasted like bitter ciabatta), but these guys have nailed it — almost. You’re not going to get your typical Parisien fresh melt-​in-​your-​mouth light pastry, but at Taste, it’s as good as it gets. I would always pick up a fresh croissant in the morning to go with my coffee and it made all the difference. The chocolate croissant is very good too.
Out of all their sandwiches, I loved the tofu on white baguette. The baguette is excellent (again, not your baguette you’d pick up at the boulangerie in your French neighborhood, but still pretty damn good!), and comes with fried tofu, carrots, cucumber, and coriander. Taste used to have this delicious sour-​ish sauce they used to put in this particular sandwich, but they’ve since changed it to mayo — I’m not sure why!
I don’t particularly care much for their teacakes. I tried the lemon teacake and it was literally DRIPPING with butter. I felt a bit ill after a couple of bites and had to put it away. I thought it just might be this particular teacake flavor, so I tried another one (I think almond?) and unfortunately it was of the same texture. The cakes are delicious, but could be less rich.
I know they do a full breakfast (eggs, etc), but I have never had enough time to stay that long. I definitely recommend this place for the busy office worker. Their service comes with a smile, and the food is cheap and delicious.
Coffee is around $ 4, and sandwiches average around $ ⁸⁄₉.

Right next door to Myer is a small baguette store. If your too focused on Myer your bound to miss it.
Baguettes are made fresh every 15mins and there is a great selection of fillings and bread types. I went with a rye smoked salmon combo ($ 12.50 eat in). Simple healthy lunch but a bit dear on the price.
They also do breakfasts, soups and burgers.
If your ever heading to Myer do keep an eye out for this place.

Fantastic baguettes, absolutely I would have to agree. You would think for an establishment that serves fresh, flavoursome and rather tasty baguettes that the coffee would be right up to par with this quality. Unfortunately not. Thankfully for me my visit to this establishment was a pit stop to catch up on some writing before heading back home. The latte had some kind of a bitter taste (sorry, it definitely wasn’t roasted well, or a tired barista could have also come into the mix) where I had to put in more than my daily ‘heart attack’ dose of sugar just to get rid of the bitterness, and so that the sugar will dominate the bitterness in the coffee. It was a pity, a bit disappointing to say the least. The ambience provides for a decent working space, and hence an appropriate and relevant pit stop experience. Not the type of establishment you would want to bring a friend for a social chit-​chat. There are better places for that in Sydney. Take away baguettes, yes please. Coffee = miss.

Heard some good things about this place so I decided to try it for lunch. All looked good but was trying to cut back on meat, so I ordered the Tofu baguette on whole wheat. I am used to the Vietnamese places only giving you the one bread option, so its nice to have the healthier options, although its not as authentic as the «Bun Mi’s.»
When asked if it was take a way or eat in, I decided to just eat in and check out the place. I didn’t realize until after I sat down that they charge $ 1 if you eat in. Otherwise I would have taken my sandwich and ate somewhere outside, as there wasn’t anything exceptional about eating in — fairly small place. However, the staff was very friendly and nice.
I got my baguette within like 3 minutes. Overall it was pretty tasty, although the amount of tofu was a bit lacking. There was just one long piece and a lot of the baguette was just bread. The toppings were good — coriander, carrots and lettuce and chili sauce. Probably should have gotten the Portuguese chicken or Vietnamese pork.
Overall a decent place, $ 7.50 for Tofu sandwich, plus $ 1 to eat in.

Taste Baguette offers up some tantalising ingredients wrapped up on scrumptiously french baguettes. The excellent taste concoctions are incredibly hard to resist, and include their famous Portuguese Chicken, with generous amounts of marinated chicken breast with piri-​piri spices, served with coral lettuce, tomato, rocket and their special house special chilli sauce.
Second favourite is the Chicken Schnitzel with Herb crumbed crispy strips served with coral lettuce, tomato, rocket, and honey mustard mayonnaise, absolutely the best nearly addictive meal (not spicy)
Also they serve Campos coffee, which is irresistible, so there is no doubt they are doing something right!

This café next to Myer on the George St side has amazing chicken Portuguese and chicken lemongrass sandwich rolls which you can choose to get on either white or wheat bread and they come with lettuce, tomato, onion and dressing (I always opt out of the dressing and it seemingly doesn’t take away from the taste). Those $ 9 chicken rolls (cut in half for your convenience) are the reason I come here. So as far as coffee goes, I don’t know. It’s ok. I had it once and it wasn’t the chicken roll.
This is also a great sit-​down place. It’s not a large space, but there are plenty of seats and tables and a bench facing a wall-​to-​wall mirror if you want to check for any niceties and/​or deformities on your face/​body while eating the sandwich.

When I was last in New York, I fell in love with Vietnamese rolls. It seemed they were all the rage in Manhattan. Friends kept insisting that I ate one, and it turns out I was very happy to oblige. So much so, in fact, that when I came back to Sydney I wondered where I’d find my fix?! Surely there had to be Vietnamese rolls here? Surely!
Little did I realise that I every time I wandered into the Market Street entrance of Myer, I was walking straight past my chance. It was actually the Campos sign that made me walk in — I needed my coffee fix and can’t go past a good Campos.
You could have knocked me over with a feather when I realised I could get my hands on a Classic Vietnamese (Pork, pâté with pickled carrot and radish, cucumber, spring onion, coriander and soy dressing). So. Much. Happiness.
There are still plenty of things I miss about NYC, but now that doesn’t include Vietnamese rolls!