REVIEW: The Naked Fig Cafe - Swanbourne Beachfront

Great for Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch or Dinner

Despite a history of poor reviews, especially in relation to the service, we decided recently to brunch at The Naked Fig cafe/restaurant on the Swanbourne beach front.

Perhaps just a tad late for brunch, we arrived to a pretty much full house, the warm sunshine no doubt acting as the perfect lure to many for a beachside breakfast or brunch. Standing in a queue in the entrance doorway is not the most comfortable way to wait for a table, but mercifully we were soon convivially seated on the front deck facing the beach.

Prompt Table Service

Contrary to some reviews, table service was prompt. Menus arrived, coffee and juice was ordered and delivered and food orders taken, all in good time. Perhaps our arrival later in the service facilitated the promptness, but in any event it was difficult to pick any real fault here.

Our Brunch Dishes

We found the breakfast menu interesting, offering a range of well constructed, and in some cases quite innovative, "two egg" options. We chose "A Bit of a Tart", a kind of deconstructed asparagus tart consisting of fresh asparagus and wilted spinach sitting on a crisp and flaky puff pastry disk, topped with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce.

We also chose "Eggs on Fire", a decent although slightly dense corn cake topped with well cooked bacon and two fried eggs, accompanied by fresh avocado and a rather good sweet corn infused sour cream. Streaks of chilli sauce across the plate provided the fire. Regrettably, the chilli seemed to have come from a squeeze bottle and probably lacked the heat and complexity that would have really "fired the dish".

Our third selection was "Grizzly Bear Pancakes" - a classic serving of crisp bacon, a short stack of well cooked pancakes, all drizzled with maple syrup and topped with two fried eggs. Note that we could have had our eggs any way we chose and that all the eggs served at The Naked Fig are free range.

We could have also chosen from a range of breakfast standards that included a version of the "big brekkie" fry up, a couple of smoked salmon variants, eggs benedict, meusli, toast and fruit. Vegetarians were catered for with the "Veggie", eggs served with roma tomatoes, baby spinach, mushrooms and a roasted tomato/capsicum sauce.

The Coffee

The coffee - we tried a skim cappuccino and a double shot flat white - was adequate but not great. Coffee beans, marketed as being Free Trade, are from Caffe Landucci, a local importer of Italian roasted coffee. The juice - it was the "Zinger" consisting of apple, ginger and carrot - was again good without reaching any great heights.

The Verdict

All in all, The Naked Fig brunch experience was an enjoyable one, no doubt enhanced by the warm sunshine and proximity to the beach. This really is a location driven restaurant/cafe but with a bit more attention to detail, the food could also come to the party.

We have never run a cafe or restaurant but can imagine how difficult it must be in Perth to staff the smooth execution of breakfast, lunch and dinner services 7 days a week (closed for dinner on Mondays, except on public holidays). And with such an overwhelming balance of poor reviews, it is obvious that something has been going terribly wrong at The Naked Fig.

It is however encouraging that management are paying attention to feedback from diners as evidenced by posts to the Urbanspoon website. With such a great location, it can only be hoped that food and service standards can be raised and sustained to satisfy most of the diners, most of the time. In the interim, we will be back for brunch and will probably give dinner and those Indian Ocean sunsets a try come next summer.