Santi's

I'm glad a cafe that is friendly and is happy to cater for the people that work near Hampden road is finally here.

Santi is a very cute cafe with a beautiful colour scheme of baby blue/cyan, black and white. Owned by a mother daughter team, it makes great coffee, scones with cream and jam and their breakfast and lunch menu is hearty and reasonably priced.

I'm just really glad that the coffee is amazing and Dianella always takes our order with a smile and is ever so friendly. So when I heard that they do bookings and allows us to pre-order our lunch so when we get there it's all ready, bunch of girls decided to try it for Friday Girl's Lunch. To top it off they were offering specials! Buy a la carte meal and get a coffee free for the month of July! w00t! BONUS.

J ordered the Santi Burger with side of homemade cut chips. It looked devine and massive. The chips were definately great!

We ordered the pasta special - which was fettuccine with chicken and bacon with flakes of chilli through it in a napolitana sacue. The spices through the sauce was amazing and it wasn't too rich (I hate that about the creamy sauaces) and it wasn't drowning in sauce. Although I wish there was a little more of the sauce. The chicken was a little tough and chewy, slightly overcook, but not complaining.

Overall, Santi's is a great addition to Hampden road with a warm, friendly atmosphere. It offers delicious a la carte meals at resonable prices and to top it off has great coffee! I think next time I want to try their pork belly.

ADDITION (20/07/2012): I just went there again on Thursday with a bigger group of girls from work and although the food was great we were grossly disappointed by the fact that the addition of chicken/squid to our salads ordered by some of the girls was $5.50. Seems a little on the expensive side. I was also a tend disappointed with my pasta special because the supposed braised beef I was to have in the pasta was NON-EXISTENT. The soup of the day - potatoe and leek, however was beautiful. Despite this, Santi is still a good lunch spot, especially when I want something a little bit fancy, and the atmosphere is great. But perhaps I might chose my dishes a little more carefully next time.