a group of four of us went here for breakfast on a saturday morning. i decided to check it out based on the other great reviews.
service was excellent, with our orders taken promptly and the waiter informing us there would be a slight delay with the meals, which really amounted to nothing.
among our group we had eggs benedict, pancakes and corn fritters. everyone though the food was fantastic. our only criticism, if you can call it that, is that the portions were a little on the large size. i almost had to force feed myself that third pancake (they're about an inch thick)!
the coffee was also great. this is only the second cafe in christchurch where i've received a cappuccino with real chocolate on top (the other one is dot com cafe in sumner)!
now there is one negative point i need to raise about ground floor cafe and that's the very high noise level. the cafe has a lot of hard surfaces for sound to reflect off, but the biggest annoyance was a very noisy food blender (might have been for making smoothies - not sure) that was being used on the counter, rather than out the back in the kitchen. the noise level from the blender was like a builder using an electric drill. in addition to all that, there was music playing, which we felt was unnecessary. we found ourselves all leaning in towards the centre of the table to hear each other speak. one of our group, who is a little hard of hearing, missed out on a lot of the conversation. i'm afraid to say, that despite the great food and service, the noise level would put us off going back.