Broadway Lounge

Cafe? Think again. The old Broadway Hotel is now a pumping bar-cum-diner, dishing out daily Happy Hours (3-8pm) and $5 pizza/drink deals.

Now called the Broadway Cafe, this cool restaurant-café does a fine line in delicious food, sexy drinks and old-school cool. With its wide diner booths, walls plastered with movie memorabilia and vintage high-volume servings, the Broadway Café is a corker for weekday CBD/inner-west warriors looking for shelter from the corporate storm and weekend wanderers chasing a cheap meal from a cranking kitchen.

Sitting on the former site of the Broadway Hotel, the newly rebooted premises now take in a sprawling outdoor area with sun-drenched tables under umbrellas. This alfresco quarter is perfect for lounging about with smooth coffees and taking advantage of their regular specials (they do a mega bacon and eggs with tomato, toast, coffee and juice for under a tenner all week). That said, it’s well worth the ride with one of the Broadway’s pornographically named (Sex on Beach, Quick Fuck or Screaming Orgasm, anyone?) but nonetheless artfully constructed cocktails.

Other drink and food specials abound here during the week – $10 salads all week, $10 jugs of Heineken or Tooheys New, $12.90 T-bones with salad on Wednesdays. No wonder they draw all types – office drones, road-gangers, students and Chippendale bohemians. For lunch we love our works burger. It comes bulging with a fat beef patty and a pile of chunky chips riding shotgun. Equally good are the pizzas, of which we snap up two pearlers from the huge range – a ‘Garie’ with pancetta, provolone and olives and a ‘Bundeena’ with prawns, avocado and prosciutto. Both are served by the café’s sleek fleet of fast, foxy waitresses and hit the table piping hot, their thin crusts scattered with fresh well-blended ingredients.