Vintage Bakeshop & Cafe: Another Breakfast Place in Karachi

I love breakfast.

Breakfasts are undoubtedly one of the most important meals of a person. You wake up after, 8 hours of sleep and you definitely deserve/expect excellent food in breakfast.

It had been a long time since hubby and I had went for breakfast to some place new.

So we picked Vintage Bakeshop & Cafe reason being the discount coupons that we purchased from BOGO. ( a blog post about BOGO will be coming soon).

(I must admit these coupons will save you big amount of money especially when eating out with around 4-5 people)

After some skimmed research on the internet about Vintage, we were like sounds good, the food looks tempting so lets go.

Located on main Khayaban-e-e Sehar, Vintage bakeshop can be easily spotted.

A picture perfect English cafe, cozy and cheerful, unlike the cafes in Europe which have seating arrangements mainly on the streets under the sun, in Vintage the seating is in the basement owing to the fact that our weather will not allow a breakfast place to set the table outside and also we don’t have proper footpaths where people enjoy walks early in the morning.

When you enter the cafe one expects the smell of freshly roasted coffee mixed with the aroma of caramel.

However this was not the case here probably because their kitchen is in  the basement.

I had read online that their beefy omelette is one of their best, so we ordered that but unfortunately it wasn’t available and the only protein left in the menu was chicken and turkey.

So I ordered a Turkey Bacon Sandwich and hubby ordered Egg Benedict ( Egg Benedict is an English breakfast which has poached eggs of the highest quality served on bread slices and the main ingredient of this dish is the Hollaindaise sauce, which is made from egg yolk and butter, so definitely the color of the sauce is yellow)

Egg Benedict

Turkey Bacon Sandwich

Classic Waffle

The basement looks beautiful, much attention has been given to details which reflect in the tables, English style chairs, pastel colored floret wall papers, classic English lamps, you will love the interior!

It took a while for the food to be served but just in a few minutes the entire place was full mostly with women, owing to the fact that nowadays moms breakfast is a fast growing trend in Karachi. Moms love to hangout with other moms of their kids school because they have so much common to share and usually its the school going kids moms who wake up early here, other wise Karachi is a night life kind’a city.

Finally our wait was over and I got my Turkey bacon sandwich with Dijon potatoes. It tasted good, the potatoes were crispy and the turkey bacon was also sumptuous but the biggest disaster was the Egg Benedict!

It was nothing like it. There was no Hollandaise sauce, and the biggest disappointment was the quality of eggs.

There is a huge variation in the quality of eggs. From the cheapest eggs costing Rs 60-80 dozen, to Omega 3 eggs costing around Rs 200 a dozen, and the real desi eggs which are for Rs 600.

These eggs which were used in Eggs Benedict were of the lowest quality, you can easily tell this by looking at the color of the yolk, since in poached eggs the yolk is runny and you just cant doubt over the quality of the eggs.

My hubby called upon the waiter and asked him about the situation of our Egg Benedict, and at first he was like Sir this is how it is, then upon insisting and explaining that the Hollandaise sauce in any part of the world is yellow and this is not even close to yellow, the waiter took it back to his chef, after 10 minutes we were returned the same plate. And the lame excuse was that the chef said Sir if I make it yellow it will turn bitter.

Bitter as to was he going to add turmeric in it?

Upon realizing that we wont be served what he had hoped for, we moved on to the next item that’s dessert. We ordered a simple classic waffle. For anyone of you who has been to Belgium and has tasted the real waffle there will immediately know the difference…authentic Belgian waffles are supposed to be piping hot, crispy on the outside and airy on the inside) and original waffles are eaten alone without any syrup or sides.

The classic waffle here at Vintage was average. However the ice cream in a chocolate cup was excellent and tasted sumptuous with the chocolate cup.

But then again the Regular tea was a big disaster, I mean for Rs. 95 you get two Lipton tea bags dipped in hot water and separate milk. At least a proper doodh patti would do justice.

However, they were kind enough to serve everyone complimentary cookie cups with milk. I brought them home and my elder boy really liked it.

So after not such a good experience and feeling my high expectation dampened, the head manager was kind enough to not charge for the Egg Benedict and later in the evening we also received an apology call, which I hope gives them more room for improvement.

The only reason I discuss the flaws of this cafe is that these cafes are pricey… each item in the menu costs around Rs. 600 to Rs. 700 and then if the promised dish is not authentic this can really make the customer angry after all we don’t want to spend our hard earned money over average items.

And also its my kind suggestion to all the restaurateur out there that please only serve those items in which you have specialty in. Even if that’s only 4 items, because quality can never supersede quantity especially in food.

Hoping for a better experience next time!

Do share about your experience at Vintage.