Koukla

82 Vincent St
Daylesford, VIC 3460

03 5348 2363

Recently my husband and I decided it was time to get out of Melbourne and indulge in a weekend of wining and dining, massages, facial scrubs and body wraps. Where else to go but Daylesford, the undisputed spa capital of Victoria. The journey takes you about an hour by car, so we left bright and early leaving the baby with my mother in law and headed off to freedom.
I had read that Koukla of the Frangos & Frangos group not only had a great reputation for good food, but had also just won awards for best licenced restaurant, best coffee and best barista in the  Golden Plate Awards 2011 in the Ballarat/Daylesford region, so I decided we would go there to fuel up before our weekend of baby free pampering bliss.
There is a real warmth to this place as soon as you enter. The mis-matched furniture, the cosy fire radiating from the wood fired pizza oven, and the quirky staff made me feel quite at home. I sat there waiting to be served, all the while having flashbacks from my uni days when I lived in Fitzroy and thought I was über-cool. Our waitress arrived promptly and we ordered our coffees and food all while admiring the place.

Coffee     $3.80 each

The lattes arrived and were guzzled down quickly as we were tired and needed a caffeine hit and also because they were really good. 2 more please.

Red eggs     $15.90 

Wood fired egg and bacon pizza     $16

Did you see the photo of the burnt pizza? I'll get back to that. 

The eggs were OK, but the potatoes were hard and I was expecting more taste wise because of the chorizo and tomato, but it just failed to pack a punch. The saving grace was in fact the sweet caramelised red onion. That was delicious and I would have been happy with just that on toast. Now back to the pizza. We sat right next to the chef's counter and had a great view of the action and the wood fired oven. So imagine our shock when we see the pizza come out and placed on the plate and it is obviously burnt to hell, honestly no amount of parsley can disguise that fact. The waitress goes up to collects the food., lifts the pizza to look at the base, asks "is this OK?", receives a response of  an almost annoyed "yeah", shrugs her shoulders and brings it out anyway. Now pardon the Gen Y slang but WTF? Maybe the chef and waitress were having a bad day, well I don't care. Take some pride in your work or just do something different. Really disappointing. it ruined all the nice vibes we had gotten when we first walked in and just couldn't wait to get out. Obviously we did not, and could not finish our breakfasts.

This may probably be the shortest review I have ever written, but like most peoples mothers always say "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"

Ratings out of 10
Food 2/10
Service 3/10

Atmosphere 4/10

Value  5/10

Koukla  3.5/10

Would I return?No