Review: The Preview Cafe opens in Forestville
The Preview is a suburban cafe with an interesting menu and great coffee.
Manly
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Stick the word naughty onto anything and you’ve grabbed my attention.
In this case, it’s a pimped piece of banana bread — a calorific waist-expander — that has got us talking.
A couple of simple tweaks and just-another-slice-of-banana-bread turns into a rather naughty brekkie, or as we did, an after-lunch sharable sweet treat.
Naughty banana bread is drizzled with honey and plated up with a couple of halved and poached strawberries and some fancy spoon work. The star though, is the fresh mint folded through the quenelle of mascarpone. I’ll be trying this one at home.
The Preview used to be a convenience store, and before that, a butcher’s shop. It’s now been transformed into a funky little cafe. The bare brick walls, a concrete floor, white herringbone tiling and besser blocks studded with mini succulents give it a vibe akin to Newtown or Surry Hills than quarter-acre block suburbia.
Owners Vinnie Capozzi and Nic Blair and their chef are making a statement with the food, too.
You won’t find meat pies, sausage rolls and old-style burgers with tinned beetroot here, instead you’ll find innovative interpretations of cafe favourites reworked for a changing demographic.
The pair has spent the first month finetuning the all-day menu. There’s a burger of sorts — if you can call a milk bun stuffed with slow-coked lamb, rocket, fresh mint and peas, a burger in the traditional sense and there’s avo on toast, always a favourite, even if you’re not saving for a house deposit.
Hot off the build-your-own breakfast option — everyone wants avo on toast — the cafe has brought in something more fancy. Preview will serve avocado bruschetta with labne, heirloom tomatoes and a watercress mix. Roasted granola bombe Alaska, with yoghurt whip and fruit compote is staying and so is the salmon salad.
This lunch dish is melt-in-your-mouth delicious. The slow-cooked piece of salmon is presented on a wedge of caramelised pumpkin and a crunchy tabouli made with kale and black beans, cherry tomatoes, the mere hint of chilli and creamy labne, to balance any heat.
It really is a bowl with soul, popping with colour and bursting with flavour and is one of best salads I’ve had in a long time.
Caffeine is treated as seriously as the food. The house blend is Monte Carlo, from local boutique roasters, Gabriel.
The Preview has rotating single origins and customers try their beans, before anyone else does — hence the name. Bags of beans are for sale too.
Once hipsters program their sat navs to find the side streets, expect more beards and tatts in the area.
ESSENTIALS
What: The Preview
Where: 4/51 Arthur St Forestville
Phone: No
Open: Monday- Saturday, from 6am-3.30pm; Sunday, 6am- 3pm. Food from 7am.
Go for: Salmon salad with black beans and kale tabouli, $18; lambwich with mint, pease and rocket, $15
Coffee: Gabriel, plus a rotating selection of single origin collection
Vibe: Suburban buzz
Bottom line: $53.50
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