Paleo Cafe

The Paleo Cafe Paddington has permanently closed in 2015.

The Paleo Café is Paddington’s buzzy hub of clean living and part of a back-to basics slow food movement that is quietly gathering pace around Brisbane.

For those unfamiliar with paleo cuisine, it’s like food without all of the distractions. Gone are the additives, sugar, gluten, dairy and fat that we take for granted as part of the taste and instead the food is reverted to its original and purest form as our ancestors ate it. Which, for the person with a food allergy, makes the Paleo Cafe dining paradise. And for everyone else it means the real flavours get a chance to shine for as everything has such a short shelf life it has to be hunted, gathered, served and eaten now.

Indeed while you’re sitting there on one of the bright orange seats  hoeing into your Caveman breakfast and wondering how on earth a sausage came to taste as fragrant as this, there’s a constant parade of boxes filled with stuff like whole pumpkins being delivered to the kitchen.

As for the menu, everything’s delicious, mammoth-free and very good value: breakfasts include smoked salmon and chive blini, zucchini and kale frittata, the full-on protein lovers Caveman or a berry and granola breakfast parfait while lunch ranges from salads like mango, avocado and macadamia to slow cooked pork belly with root veges and green beans or seared Tasmanian salmon with sweet potato and pumpkin mash with asparagus as well as daily curries and soups.

Drinks play a big role here too, with all manner of healthful fresh smoothies and juices (try the Green Detox!), some of them age-defying, to which you can add things like akai berries, spirulina or proteins if inclined. Teas are from Tea Drop and Coffee comes from Elixir and comes normal or Bulletproof.

Little paleos are well catered for here too, with a kids menu that includes the healthy Pebble and Bam Bam breakfast (free range egg and bacon on paleo toast with hollandaise sauce and a side of fresh fruit) and lunches of coconut crumbed fish or pork sausage with sweet potato chips or mash and a special paleo bolognese with sweet potato noodles. To accompany there are child size juices and smoothies or babycinos.

And if you’d like to take anything home there are heat up meals in the fridge and shelves of cereals and groceries for purchase.

Need to know: All food served at the Paleo Café is dairy, grain, gluten, sugar and preservative free.