Cafe Mindoro - not quite a "gold mine"

A Filipino/Spanish cafe which takes its name from the 7th-largest island in the Philippines, and that from a Spanish term meaning "gold mine". My verdict? Not quite the find I was expecting. Though I won't rule out a return visit, it's not going to sit very high on the agenda.

Address: 26 Station Rd (cnr Riverview Tce) Indooroopilly 4068
Phone/fax: 3878 6422
Hours: Mon-Fri 1000-1430, 1700-late; weekends 0900-late
Web: http://www.cafemindoro.com/index.html
Email: enquiry@cafemindoro.com
Parking: on street

I have walked past this place a few times without ever really taking much notice of it, and it wasn't until I read a review in the newspaper ("Feisty feast", The Sunday Mail, IE, June 17, 2007) that my interest was piqued. After reading the review and checking out their website, I was keen to try out the food for myself - and finally got the chance to round up a group from church last Sunday to sample the Mindoro fare.

Restaurant interior, as viewed from our corner table.

The venue is reasonably bright, having lots of glass along two of its four walls, and yellow paint on the walls. There's also a large slab of mirror in one corner (where we were sitting, with one side of the table getting cushioned seats). A reasonably pleasant dining environment.

Disappoinment #1: Having seen the menu prices, I was pretty set on trying the $8.50 lunch specials, a feature listed in the newspaper review and also on the online menu. However upon arriving at the cafe I found only a regular menu without lunch specials, and the waitress subsequently confirmed that they were no longer serving these specials. So it was onto the pricier mains, figuring it would probably be a wasted trip to come here only to eat sandwiches to stay close to the $10 mark...

The newspaper review gave the impression that the servings at this joint are quite generous, suggesting that you come hungry - almost starving. Our table of 9 had a mixed order of a Lamb Caldereta ($19), steak sandwich ($8), and the rest opted to share 3 serves of the Cafe Mindoro Paella amongst them. This last dish is listed in the menu as "fragrant rice with prawns, pork, Filipino sausage, chicken and vegetables. Serves minimum 2 persons." Having read from the newspaper review that the $35 signature dish was "amazing value for money" and "bursting with meat and sweet prawns", I confidently opted to split the dish three ways while the other two serves were each split two ways.

Cafe Mindoro Paella - definitely not as described.

Disappoinment #2: The paella that we did get served was not quite bursting with meat, and there were no prawns in sight, let alone any sweet ones. Neither were there any vegetables, unless you count the decorative snip of parsley (or was it coriander?), four slices of cucumber, and the tomato bits which formed the sauce. There was pork and a bit of chicken, as well as a few bits of calamari (which is not included in the menu description). As for the Fillipino sausage, I have no idea... maybe that's what the meatball looking things were meant to be?? Lastly, maybe I'm a bigger eater than the average Cafe Mindoro diner, but I would be hard pressed to imply it as sufficient to serve minimum 2 persons. Which is a good thing that all mains come served with steamed rice - I ate at least as much steamed rice as I did paella rice, in order to not leave the place in the same state as which I entered: hungry. One of the other guys who split a paella two ways was still hungry at the end of his share, though I don't think he ate much steamed rice along with it.

Now maybe this was the product of another recent change, sometime between the date of the newspaper reviewer's visit and ours, and recent enough that the in-house and online menus have not yet been updated... I didn't ask, and reserve the right to be unimpressed.

The food itself tasted ok, without being fantastic. The sauce was strong on tomato, which some did not find to their liking. Mine was diluted with equal parts steamed rice anyway, so I didn't mind. But it ends up being a tasty yet fairly normal sort of rice-based meal with some meat, and definitely not something I would pay $35 for (even at ~$12 for my one-third share -- there are places closer to home where I can get a truly generous serve of some tasty rice/noodle based meal and maybe even get change from a $10 note).

If I come back, I might try the Filipino breakfast (which if I recall correctly is served all day), or if I'm in a particularly adventurous, cashed up, and forward planning mood, one of their special orders (needs to be ordered one day in advance). That's if I feel like giving the place another chance to impress. Either way, "cheap" and "where value for money is first-rate" are descriptors used by the newspaper reviewer, which I could not apply to this cafe.

Time of visit: [Lunch, Sunday 29 July 2007].
With: Clay/SLE misc.
Trivia: One of the waitresses is from Peru, and the chef is a Malaysian from Sabah!