Have you ever made a promise to your friends to all do something in the not too distant future? Then before you know it, a week has passed, a month has passed, an entire year has passed!? Well after walking by Cornersmith one afternoon during the start of 2014 that’s exactly what I did. I made that promise that we would come back here to eat one day and here we are over a year later…
Cornersmith is a small cafe located on the corner (I see what they did there) of Petersham and Illawara Rd. We order a few of the drinks to start, consisting of the standard coffee and the not so standard grapefruit elixir and prune shake.
The coffee here was simply put, great. It was smooth, creamy and they use a Mecca blend here so no complaints about that. The grapefruit elixir was sour but oddly refreshing, while the prune shake was just… pruney, like there were still chunks of prune still in the shake.
Ploughman’s Plate ($18)
Anyways enough about the drinks lets move on to what we all came here for. The food. So let’s start with the ploughman’s plate. Instead of boring you with my thoughts on each of the individual components, I’ll just give you my overall impression. The ploughman’s plate is lots of delicious, good quality ingredients displayed nicely on a wooden plate. Yeah I think that pretty much sums it up.
Everything is sliced up, which makes it not only easy to share but also to mix and match between the ingredients. The pickle gets a special mention though because I’m the type of guy that takes out the pickle before eating his cheeseburger. So you know Cornersmith’s house made pickles are good when I completely finished every last one of them. Oh and yes that is Pepe Saya butter in the centre.
Cornersmith Plate ($18)
Next up the Cornersmith plate. I guess it was Cornersmith’s own take on the traditional ploughman’s lunch. The ingredient that really stood out to me was the pork girdle. I wasn’t a big fan, it felt like I was eating chunks of tuna in jelly. Overall I thought this dish lacked some flavour. However, I do have to make another special mention for their house made mustard. It seems like everything made in house is delicious.
Oxheart tomatoes and spicy eggplant with ricotta ($12)
Finally the oxheart tomatoes and spicy eggplant with ricotta. We picked this dish solely because we thought that oxheart tomatoes sounded cool. However, I actually found it to be quite bland and couldn’t really taste the spice in the eggplant.
All up, I think Cornersmith is a great cafe. They definitely use fresh, quality ingredients but unfortunately that doesn’t always mean that you will end up with something that tastes great. The locals are very fortunate to have a Cafe like this in the area, but I don’t see myself going out of my way to eat there anytime in the future.
-Dennis
Fight The Craving 