On last Saturday, as we prepared for bed, Hubs mentioned that he thought of checking out Lulo, a cafe in Kemang which, claims a couple of online Indonesian news and lifestyle portal to serve a wide variety of breakfast choices. It's been awhile since we do a Sunday brunch, which by our definition means a fry-up i.e. bacon, eggs, hams, sausages, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms and all the works, so I said why not.
From the decor and furnishing, Lulo looks like a comfy place to chill out on a lazy Sunday, but that is ALL I can say about this cafe. As the waiter sat us down at our table, there was only a couple of Japanese guys who were already halfway through their bottles of Bintang and about to order their meals. Since we took awhile to look through Lulo's eclectic breakfast menu, by the time we ordered, another group of 4 who came in slightly later than us had placed their order ahead. So it means that we only have to wait for 6 breakfast sets ahead of us before it's our turn.
We ordered 2 lattes which arrived like after a 15 minute wait. While it look more like somebody poured warm milk into my coffee, the latte which was lacking a thin layer of foamy milk turned out to be OK, probably saved by the quality of beans that they used. And that marked our 1 hour wait for our brunch.
I mean, honestly how long does it take to fry a couple of eggs and bacon and assemble everything on the plate. Therefore to wait for more than 1 hour before our food finally arrived is really an insult to my amateur cooking skills. We waited to the point that conversation ran dry between us and we started fiddling with our phones. Halfway through, the waiter served up 2 Oreo cupcakes which looked hard, as an apology. I hit it with my teaspoon and it actually made a "thud" sound! Cupcakes turned out to be cold and hard.
At this point, Hubs got frustrated and walked over the the drinks and bar counter to find out what exactly is wrong. He came back with a disgusted look on his face. According to the waiter, it usually takes that long to cook breakfast. WHAT?! We decided to wait another 10 minutes and if no food turn up, we will just pay and leave.
And the food arrived shortly after that. Mine was a Spanish breakfast set which according to the menu consisted of potato tortilla which pork bacon. Potato tortilla turned out to be more of a potato omelet that was not salted. I had to eat it with the the crispy pork bacon to add some flavour. And the pork bacon, it wasn't even hot from the fryer/oven, meaning that it was definitely prepared way before hand.
Hubs was a German breakfast which consisted of 2 pork sausages which felt like the processed type because it sure wasn't filled with ground meat like those you get gourmet deli. He had the same crispy pork bacon, 2 sunny side up and one sad-looking grilled tomato. The more we tried to feed ourselves with what was served, the more we got upset with having to wait 1 hour for such a sad and dismal brunch. In the end, we just eff it, paid and left with most of the food untouched.
The age-old adage of "never eat at an empty restaurant" proved to be very true time and time again. We ought to know that something isn't quite right. From the moment we stepped in, the cafe was empty except for the Japanese chaps. And it was also already very late in the morning. Had the cafe been serving quality food, it wouldn't have been this empty.
We are very serious about our Sunday brunch fry-up. Despite claiming to serve a wide variety of fry-up breakfast, Lulo's version is utterly disappointing and deserves a mention to prevent serious fry-up fans from falling for this trap.
