Basic Info:
Name: Milk Cloud
Address: 283 High St, Ashburton
Phone: 9885 1917
Website: NA
Opening Hours:
Monday to Friday - 7.30am - 4.30pm
Monday to Friday - 7.30am - 4.30pm
Saturday & Sunday - 8am - 4pm
Little Eats ‘soundbite review’:
A colourful, contemporary and spacious spot on a corner location, with prime views for trainspotters. Popular with local families, but probably not worth travelling the distance for. Lots of kid-friendly ticks, but it all needs work.
Highchair: Yes
Change table: No, but very spacious loo
Pram access: Yes
Separate kids menu: Yes
Normal menu suitable for kids: Yes
Friendly staff: Some were... some weren't
Play area for kids: No
Activities provided for kids (eg: crayons): Yes, pencils & colouring books
Vibe/atmosphere: Busy, local, contemporary, colourful
Prices: Standard
Little Eats detailed review:
Ok, lets’s just get it out in the open... this corner cafe just scraped in with 3 milkshakes out of 5. Cute name, cute fit-out, cute looking staff... not so cute service. And that black hair (I am blonde) in my hotcakes? Definitely not cute either!
Our experience at Milk Cloud was rather hit and miss... and left me thinking about “what could have been”. It could have been good. Really good. Especially as there is not much else even remotely fun or funky on this Ashburton strip. And Milk Cloud is trying so hard to be just that. East side Mamma’s are crying out for more cool kid-friendly cafes a la the inner North and West, and this one has so much potential... but is just not quite there yet.
As far as cafe culture for little ones goes, Milk Cloud does seem to be a popular haunt for local brunching families, as there were a quite a few toddlers scattered about the place and babes in prams when we were there, not too mention quite a few of the grey hair brigade too. From one extreme to the other!
Anyway, they have a good little kids menu with everything from grilled cheese on toast, peanut butter sandwich triangles, pizza, mini cupcakes, mini milkshakes and babycino’s with 100’s and 1000’s... although for some reason ours were bare, but on our way out I noticed another little girl drinking her 100 and 1000 clad cino. Very inconsistent.
There were also boxes of coloured pencils and colouring in books, however the staff did not offer them to us... I only noticed them when we had to get up and help ourself to the menu’s, so then I helped myself to them too. My little one did love drawing in the Toy Story colouring-in book though while she waited for her ham and cheese toastie... as it is all about Buzz and Woody right now. To infinity and beyond!
Without nit-picking, and boring you by going in to all the details, in a nutshell the service was pretty bad. The staff were clearly Sunday casual’s, rather than seasoned hospitality professionals, and their hearts just weren’t in it. The service was inconsistent - one waitress was kinda sweet, and the other one the complete opposite, and the so-called “manager”, well that’s a whole other story! The ordering and seating system is clunky, and it was not explained to us that you need to order and pay at the counter, instead we were left sitting as solo diners upstairs without menus (also where the kitchen is located) wondering what the deal was.
They have highchairs too, no change table but a spacious loo downstairs with plenty of room to wheel in the pram to change bubs if need be. The upstairs area offers more space for families to spread out on a large communal table and cool replica Tolix chairs, or the little tables and small stools over by the bright grafitti wall mural where the wee ones could sit and draw. You just have to be watchful of the stairs, and it could be a bit tricky getting the pram up the stairs too.
It’s located on a large corner site, right near the train line, and is probably the most spacious, colourful, contemporary and fun looking cafe on this strip, so naturally it attracts the brunch with baby set. And with the highchairs, kids menu, mini milkshakes, pencils and colouring in books, they are clearly happy to welcome families and are targeting that clientele. They just need to lift their game, sort our their service, and smooth things out a bit. And then I think it could be good. Really good. (Oh and maybe the person in the kitchen with the black hair should wear a hair-net too!) :)
