Get Fresh

Get Fresh @ Bondi Junction Westfield

Where: Get Fresh Café, Level 2, Bondi Junction Westfield, 500 Oxford Street, Bondi Junction, NSW 2022

Coffee Bean: Toby’s Estate

A day of wandering about Bondi Beach, working out buses and suffering in 30°C+ heat drove us to the air-conditioned safe haven of Westfield. We decided to stop for a quick afternoon pick-me-up before calling it a day.

Get Fresh is a humble little café situated in the middle of the Level 2 thoroughfare, near Myer. Its facilities are wooden and crisp, and its menu boasts unusual delicacies such as ‘dandelion lattes’ – though this isn’t really enough to suppress the ‘shopping centre’ vibe the café radiates. As is often the case with cafés in big shopping centres, Get Fresh lacks that immersive, timeless atmosphere. But this is more to do with the space than the décor or menu.

It being a bit late in the day for a caffeine hit, we both ordered the Byron Chai Latté ($4.30). Erin got honey with hers, which came on a little side dish rather than added in.

Byron Chai Latté

The lattés were served steaming hot. We had to wait about 5 minutes before they were at a drinkable temperature. One sip tells you that Get Fresh uses real, freshly brewed chai tea – no sugary chai-flavoured powders here. The sprinkle of cinnamon on top doesn’t overpower the flavours. Indeed, it doesn’t seem to add flavour much at all.

+ Honey

In fact, this was a pretty mild-tasting drink all round. Not even the chai taste is dominant in this drink. It’s just very, very milky. Teapot-brewed chai tea has a tendency to be milky, it’s true, but chai tea can definitely be stronger in taste than this.  The honey makes a sweeter drink, though adds nothing in terms of flavour. The drink doesn’t hold up well in its latte form, either, with minimal, quickly disintegrating foam on top.

Overall, Get Fresh doesn’t seem like a bad place to go for a quick pick-me-up during a hectic day shopping. It’s convenient and it has some interesting menu options. And, granted, we didn’t try the coffee, so we might have missed out there. However, in terms of café experience and atmosphere, Get Fresh is lacking the right vibes to make it a viable place to really unwind.

Yays:

• Convenient, if you’re shopping at Westfield
• Air-conditioned
• Uses real tea for chai lattes

Nays:

• Chai latte tended to be flavourless, milky, unexceptional
• Café lacked atmosphere
• Noisy
• Overpriced drinks

Overall experience:

55% -- Pass!