T1 reviews Ha Ha Bar’s breakfast

There’s no better way to reward yourself after a run walk around Ginninderra Lake (or, more correctly, no better way to undo all your good work) than to have breakfast at one of the restaurants overlooking the lake. Faced with the choice of Ha Ha Bar or Black Pepper, this morning we chose the former.

Ha Ha Bar is situated in a large grey building off Emu Bank, sharing its location with Zambrero and Wok It Up! and, a little further away, the Lighthouse Bar. It’s unmistakably trendy, holding Sunday Sessions with live music in summer and ably services its clientele for breakfast, lunch, afternoon drinks, dinner, dinner drinks, after dinner drinks… you get the picture.

On this warm Sunday we walked in where the staff pretty much ignored us – we weren’t sure whether we should just take up a seat (of which there were few remaining – to their credit) or wait to be seated. Eventually a staffer pointed out one inside and one outside, where a couple had just finished and were standing up. We chose outside.

This was probably a mistake. The table remained littered with the previous couple’s unfinished food for 20 minutes – even after we’d been given our menus. We waited and waited to be served and started the whole, “If they don’t come in the next two minutes we’re leaving…”, but surprisingly they did.  However, it still wasn’t until another table had their orders taken that we were able to get another waitress’s attention to have ours taken, and then another waitress awkwardly removed the plates and cups around us while she did so. Grabbing the remaining cups, the second waitress asked, “Is this your coffee cup?” I didn’t and still don’t understand the intent of the question – who cares whose cup it was (and it wasn’t mine) when it was finished?

The waitress who took our orders told me that I might not be able to get a tomato juice – she wasn’t sure if they had any available as they didn’t have any the previous day – so she took another drink order just in case, which I was impressed about given it saved time. In taking my order of eggs benedict she described it as coming with ‘smoked salmon‘ when the menu clearly said smoked trout. No biggie to me, but perhaps to other people.

Boyfriend ordered the poached eggs on sour dough bread and fruit salad, dusted with icing sugar and drizzled with honey and yoghurt. My eggs benedict did indeed come with an exceptionally generous and delicious serving of smoked trout (not smoked salmon!), the eggs were cooked perfectly and placed onto a solitary piece of sour dough (just enough) and the hollandaise was spot on.

My replacement drink was the Ha Ha Elixir (under the ‘Mocktails’ category) – a refreshing combination of raspberry, lemon, lime and peach juices with a splash of lemonade on top. It was excellent.

In contrast to the couple before us, the calibre of the food was marked by our licked-clean plates, and I was pretty surprised that the total came to just $42 for a mocktail, a coffee and three breakfasts.

We’ll be back for breakfast, but only because of the food.

Attendees: T1 and Boyfriend

When: Sunday, 16 October – 10.35am

Where: Ha Ha Bar, Emu Bank, Belconnen

Cost: $42 for two

Want more? http://www.hahabar.com.au/