Taste Baguette & Grill, Darling Quarter, Sydney CBD

Another business day, another of those precincts designed by the same people paid by the same developers off to milk the same formula? It looked like one of those joints in Melbourne's South Bank. It had the same lay out, perhaps the same frontage. The premises has the same opportunities and challenges. High tourist traffic, with the presence of a bunch (actually a few thousand in number) of resident twenty somethings with high discretionary cash flows, need to unwind after 7pm and with a refusal to go home to another cubicle (after spending ten hours in an office cubicle). The nearby ground space was turned into a kind of recreational adjunct to a gym, even if there was no proper gym outfit nearby so to speak. People were actually playing table tennis on stone tables, others were hanging on the grass and benches as if to escape the confines of their nearby high rise units. Hmnn, I recall Brisbane's South Bank. Rentals of outlets look suspiciously high, so there is obvious pressure to have high margins and high turnover in any business one operates around here.

My overall impressions of Taste, one of several outlets in the food street alley of Darling Quarter, are as follows.

Atmosphere: Commercial

Location: Touristy, Transient and Office

Taste: Below Expectations.

People Engagement: Okay if You Start the Conversation First, maybe the Staff are Too Tired.

Service: Minimal

Best Time To Visit: If You Happen to Pass by

My fav Dish Experienced: None

Would I Return?: Maybe not.

At Taste, I had smoked salmon below some rocket leaves and an omelette all sitting on surprisingly ordinary toasted bread. The place is not just for breakfast, it operates a licensed bar, has sit down arrangements inside and outdoors plus runs a take away counters for those coffees and take away baguettes/ rolls. Taste is open till late and opens early, looks like the literal burning of the candle at both ends. Below image, a profile of the day time crowd. Taste originated in the Surry Hills precinct of inner Sydney and there it offered a fusion of French-Vietnamese fare. The Darling Quarter branch also provides Vietnam-inspired interiors for its sit down restaurant. Oh yes, they served Campos blended coffee with my breakfast choice above.