A few weeks back it was my birthday, and there’s nothing that young females living in Sydney love more than a good boozy brunch to celebrate their birthdays. Most people will know the basic ones you can go to (The Winery, Darlo Country Club, etc.) but my sisters messaged me asking if I wanted to go to Panama House for my bday, which is one I hadn’t heard of. My main thought about this place is that they should be much more popular and well-known then they are. With a view of Bondi Beach and the blue ocean that accompanies it, and a $30 bottomless menu covering food, tea and coffee this place has everything you need for a great morning. For the price of $50, you can also add on bottomless drinks for 2 hours including mimosas and bellinis.
Even though it was winter, I was grateful for the outside seats, as the patio area has the view and a much better vibe on a sunny day, and with heaters and blankets provided, the winter chill wasn’t too bad.
Panama House’s focus is on Latin American food, which isn’t exactly synonymous with brunch, which might be why it hasn’t kicked off yet. The bottomless menu had 7 courses which you had to work through before you could start ordering more. You had enchiladas, croquettes, and then the more exotic dishes like chilli baked beans with a fried egg on top. The food was delicious, albeit a little unusual for a brunch, and definitely had a kick to it to warm you up in the winter weather.
The catch with the bottomless menu (because you know there always is a catch with something like this) is that the food is extremely slow coming out. We hadn’t had breakfast before going and had an 11 o’clock sitting so we were definitely hungry by the time we got there, and after we arrived we waited twenty minutes for the first dish, which is fine. The next dish, however, took another 40 minutes to come out and when it did, it was a very small dish. By this time, there was some definite ‘hanger’ rippling throughout the group. One can only assume that this is done to limit how much time at the end you have to order more rounds off the menu. Luckily, by the time you got through all the dishes, you were pretty full anyway so we only ordered one more round of one dish, but the slow start at the beginning was frustrating.
The good thing about a place like this with bottomless offerings, is that they didn’t make everyone opt into everything. Only two of us decided to go for bottomless drinks, whilst the rest opted out and that was fine. The service of drinks was great too, in that we just got given a bottle of champagne and juice and could serve ourselves, and the refills on these was very quick too. So if your aim was to go and get super drunk at a brunch, that was very do-able here!
All in all, it was a pretty good experience, although their food service could have been quicker, and they didn’t do split bills.
I give Panama House in Bondi 8 out of 10 for a boozy weekend brunch!
A Turtle Stranger 