Air Coffee, Castle Hill

One of my New Year's resolutions is to visit more cafes and restaurants in my local area.  One of my other resolutions to to eat less (ergo loose weight) as you can see the two don't really go hand in hand so we'll see how 2013 pans out dress size wise. So far not so good!

In the meantime I donned my stretchy "eating-dress" and headed over to Castle Hill to check out Air Coffee - a coffee roasters come cafe that has been churning out coffee and food to locals for about two years.  I'm not sure why it's taken my so long to visit as it's a great cafe and I've always heard great things about it.

I kick my first visit off with my current obsession - an iced coffee.  Long gone are the days of cafes serving iced coffees that come loaded with ice-cream and cream-from-a-can, but every now and then you do come across an iced coffee served over ice-cream rather than ice. It was delicious and indulgent...and didn't bode well for my grand 2013 weight loss plans.  On my next visit I ask for my coffee sans ice-cream which was no problem at all...and it was just as delicious.

I've been told by some friends that Air Coffee recently changed ownership and that their coffee has changed - it just tastes "different".  This being my first visit I can't comment on whether the coffee has changed or not, but I know it was good enough for me.

The menu at Air Cafe is simple - their kitchen being just a few hot plates + grills behind the counter - but everything on the menu is so tempting.

After dillydallying for ages over what to order I finally settle on the Corn Fritters with Salad ($15.00). These usually come with ham but I opted out of the ham option (Meatless Monday). The fritters were really flavoursome with lovely pieces of sweet corn throughout. That said, I probably would've liked a piece of bread with this dish to help "pad" it out.

I was still feeling a tad peckish after my corn fritters. Lucky for me Air Coffee has a tempting selecting of sweets to help fill that last 10% of available stomach room that I had rattling around. This salted caramel tart ($4.00) was petite but AMAZING!!! The pasty was lovely and crumbly and the filling sinfully rich, chocolaty with a slightly salty caramel filling. Oh my!

I'm back a few days later for brunch with VegeTARAian.  I was aiming to have something "brunch-like" like eggs on toast, but could not pass up the special of the day - Pork Sandwich with Cornichons ($10.00).  The pulled pork was tender + smokey and the sandwich had a thin spread of what I think was Marmalade which was a nice sweet counterbalance to the smokey meat. To be honest I mostly ordered this sandwich as I wanted the crunchy little cornichons. Yes, really.

Tara is not a coffee fan, so opted for a Soy Hot Chocolate which she said was pretty nice...

Not quite brunch, not quite dessert, the Banana Bread ($10.00 from memory) falls somewhere nicely in the middle. Served with a dollop of ice-cream, freshly cut strawberries and a drizzle of honey it's a sinfully delicious way to kick off the weekend.

Air Coffee is at unit 1/10 Salisbury Road, Castle Hill. They are open 7 days a week for breakfast + lunch.  They are in the light industrial area and so far I've had no trouble finding a park.