Cirque

Woohoo! Finished another round of nights. As per my tradition, I scoured Urbanspoon for the best places for breakfast available to my usual strict criteria, available to public transport, decent prices, good looking food, an interesting menu and something new! 

H. and I went after work straight to Cirque. Cirque is hardly the most innovative of locations to go to. Its probably in the top 5-10 places of Brisbane in everyone's list for solid breakfasts, other locations include Gun Shop, Flute Fine Food, Anouk, Lady Marmalade, Pearl Cafe, Crosstown Eating House, Campos, Brew, Comfort at my table, Dandelion and Driftwood and those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head. I've been to five of the aforementioned locations, Cirque now, Gun Shop, Flute Find Food, Lady Marmalade, Crosstown Eating House and working on the rest. Although I can't bring myself to eat at Pearl, not sure why, maybe its the uninspiring menu that gets to me.

Don't lie. This looks delicious.

It was a massive toss up between Cirque and Symposium, both in New Farm and looking good from their Urbanspoon reviews, website menus, friend's envy when going past as well as this blog's stunning photos and excellent reviews. We were initially pegged for Symposium from that crazy blog photo of their filo pastry with scrambled eggs, proscutto and liberally drowned in hollandaise sauce for a fatty breakfast overload.
On closer inspection though, the Symposium web menu reveals that this is no longer an option and so to Cirque it was!

Sneaky Cirque. Thought it was closed for a tick

After being incredulously stared down by a female customer, we were quickly seated by the attentive wait staff there. Seriously the wait staff were fantastic, they were helpful, polite, eager to please and with genuine smiles, but who wouldn't smile at the combo of H. and myself? As soon as we were seated, bam cold water and glasses, as well as instant menus and asking us what drink we wanted. H. declined and I went for the pineapple and mint frappe, a frothy, sweet and not overly minty drink although the taste was definitely there. Immense like, smooth as silk, no chunky ice or pineapple fibre, I was a happy girl.

Pineapple and mint frappe.
Its not even green or garnished with mint! Such restraint!

While we were deciding on the menu, H. was agonising over two choices, the breakfast pide or the corn cakes. H. is notorious for choosing possibly the worst item on the menu. Or if not the worst items on the menu, she ends up with massive food envy. We once went to Jude with friends and she ordered a cold roasted vegetable tart, that was tiny, apparently not very tasty and suffered whilst the rest of us ate burgers the size of our heads. Apparently I have the best taste in picking food based off of word menus, some things you just can't learn I guess, although frantic urbanspoon/instagraming does help. She was trying to convince me to help her decide between the pair, and I was almost contemplating just ordering both dishes so we could try both, when our waitress swooped in.

We told her about our dilemma, and she helpfully went through the menu with us. I like that, nothing worse than an indecisive or even super pushy wait staff. H. mentioned that she wanted to eat something savoury but was unsure if the corn cakes were savoury. Our waitress replied that the corn cakes were definitely the better of the two, as they were quite interesting in taste and texture, while the breakfast pide was basically a fancy toasted sandwich. She also had good up sell abilities, considering I got my house smoked rainbow trout with a side of toast, "its not very filling and you might need something to mop up that yolk," and H. decided to tack on a side of bacon with her corn cakes. Good job waitress, good job.
While we were waiting, H. got to complaining about my blog's lack of photos, menus, recipes and other fun stuff. Apparently H. is also a fan of this blog! I've been sick was my excuse! I dutifully popped out my phone and began taking snaps of the restaurant. I'm not quite at ease taking snapshots of anything beside my food yet, being a somewhat paranoid, maybe not private person in real life.
One of the nurses, whose nickname I cannot decide on who I shall call Ms. Chai, had a rousing conversation with myself and a sleepy patient about the merits of chai tea at about 3am in the morning. We discussed coffees vs teas and then the wonders of chai, the various chai tea locations around our work place, the choice between syrups. too sickly, powders, just right, or spice mixes, too time consuming and bits, and different good chais we had recently. With that in mind, I'm sure she'll be pleased to see that Cirque have such a great chai tea blend that they can sell it as a side line item. You can also see the brand of coffee they stock, Genovese.

House blend chai mix. Mmmmm smells like chai~

This doorway lead to what must be a restocking/second dining area as I kept seeing wait staff pop down there and come back up with ingredients. 

Downstairs?

And here is our food! Mine is the smoked rainbow trout with soft poached eggs, wilted spinach, chorizo, horseradish rosti and beurre noisette. With my side of toast! 

House smoked rainbow trout and friends

H. got the sweet corn cakes with smashed avocado, tomato salsa and a side of bacon.

Sweet corn cakes. Not just a bacon stack!

This is a post attack photo! Check out that oozy egg yolk phroar!

Oh baby

H. immediately destroyed her tower, but also paused while I was taking a photo, geez she's good! 

She was a blur! She already ate some

While I was taking photos, H. cut me out a blob of corn cake with some of her rocket, tomato salsa and avocado speared on it. The corn cakes were solid, the corn kernels were everywhere but they didn't have that great pop! of sweetness that really good sweet corn has. Maybe that's just a personal preference for me. They were compact little things with a great shape and colour to them. Probably wouldn't order it again though. I didn't really notice the onion jam when I was tasting it though, unless that white sauce is it? Whatever it was, it was tasty.
I was super impressed by the amount of bacon present. Not bad for a $2.50 side! Crispy with a bit of a chew to it and gorgeous char markings, it was still juicy and bloody heaps of it too. After eating most of the bacon, H. gave me a piece hahaha.

Meanwhile for my ocean trout, the poached eggs looked fantastic. I'm slightly suspicious of them as they seem a little TOO perfect, not a single wispy bit in sight. Ah well, whatever gives me gooey yolked poached eggs, and boy were they ever. Huge amounts of spinach, well wilted so still having their vibrant colour and holding a shape. The ocean trout was meltingly soft, flaking apart when I just looked at it, it had a lovely, delicate smoky flavour to it, stronger than others' I've had, but I'm not complaining. The sour dough bread was fantastic, light sour notes, with that fresh bread turned to toast crunch you get to the soft innards as well as the still chewy crust. 

The only thing I had to complain about my dish was probably the rosti. I couldn't really taste the horseradish in any sort of way, I didn't even get a bit of a nose clearing tang from the horseradish. It also looked terrible, so terrible I didn't even want to take a photo. I basically went, what the hell is that once I'd taken off the spinach. It was greyish plank of potato, it invoked images of a dodgy cheese less potato bake, not what should be a golden brown, crunchy potato rosti. Maybe it got soggy, who knows, I still ate it all. Not really sure why the little chorizo cubes kept appearing either, I felt like it didn't make much sense being in there. Also where was my fancy French buerre noisette! WHERE IS MY BURNT BUTTER SAUCE.

I WANT IT NOW

While we were eating, our table was quietly rocking away and when we were distracted, our waitress slide up to us and popped a coaster under the offending table leg. I saw you lady, I applaud your skill. Your service is almost Japanese in its efficiency, take that with highest honour.

Basically our waitress.

Anyway, it was a nice little shop. I'd be keen to go here again to try some of their other menu items, like the intriguing CHOW DOWN. My sister, VGirl, says the vego chow down and the vege pide are a good sell.

H. and I talked about lots of things, mostly food related stuff while we were there. She demanded I make a future posts teaching her how to make my beef stroganoff, Vietnamese omelette, zuccini slice and my fluffy frittatas. She also found out my recipe for potato and danish feta cakes and my spinach pie made also with feta and this time ricotta cheese. H. also wants to go out and eat at Lady Lamington, Symposium, Ipoh Laksa and this other food place we found on Cudo. Look out for these future I guess!? Send me any requests for anything I've made in the past and I'll try my best to oblige!