Review Ion Cafe & Bar - Brisbane

Lovely cafe - came here for breakfast on the weekend, and it was a great experience. The staff sung happy birthday to my partner which was a lovely and personable touch! Good food selection, beautiful location and seating out the back, would come back!

Good selection on the menu, staff were really friendly, our food was brought out quick, presentation of the food was good too. Really enjoyed eating here and looking forward to going back and trying other things on the menu!

Awesome food, spot on coffee and fast service. Really happy with my breakfast here this morning.

Pleasant cafe, tucked on a side street off Samford Road. Very popular on Saturday morning but we got our coffee fairly quickly, without fuss. There's a small park nearby if you can't find a seat at the venue.

We visited the ION Cafe on a rainy Saturday. The wait staff greeted us with a smile and showed us to our table on the rear deck. The rear deck is well presented, clean and has a nice atmosphere. I noticed all of the wait staff were young which is a great thing for the local community. All were well presented and friendly. Ordering was available via an online menu or you could opt to order directly from the kitchen. We chose the online option, it was easy to use. The Mocha I order was delicious. We ordered the ION Burger with Sweet Potato Chips. It was very tasty and very filling. The reason I only gave 4 stars is the kitchen staff have to take garbage bags via the rear deck through the seated customers to exit downstairs. It was a bit off putting. I understand it is a bit nitpicky, and probably not viable or possible, but maybe in the future a new exit could be built directly off the kitchen.

As a semi regular it’s a great little cafe. Really nice food and coffee. Parking is either out the front or there is a driveway that leads to down the back with plenty of parking but other business may use this. Note for parents with prams, usally they don’t accept prams out the back on weekends due to space, they do have high chairs. But definitely ring them before hand to double check. Lunch starts at 10am and kitchen closes at 1:30pm. If you need to book, go on their website to book a day in advance. I suggest you book as they get busy. I believe it’s dog friendly but double check.

Great coffee, excellent food with immaculate vibes. Staff were pleasant and service was quick. I would highly recommend this cafe for breakfast.

Loved it, food & coffee, very nice staff & great at keeping tables clean after customers vacate!!

Ion is the kind of destination establishment that most dream of. I have frequented over a hundred good coffee shops in the last 40 years in Brisbane and double this overseas and I would place Ion in the top ten in terms of coffee quality. It is consistently extracted perfectly and delivered at just the right temperature. Ion has several excellent baristas and all the wait staff are a credit to the establishment. The food is good, portions are generous without being wasteful and there is enough whimsy on the menu without being pretentious. I recommend a Ristretto to verify my comments about the coffee and am quite partial to the Sour dough with avo, chorizo and crispy bacon for breakfast. For evenings, it is hard to go past the wood-fired pizzas or the signature ribs. Custom is the best indicator of quality and Ion is very often full of satisfied ones. If you travelled 45 minutes to sample ion, you'd be pleased you did.

Remember visiting this cafe for breakfast when it was under different management. Tried it again for breakfast recently, we sat on the pet friendly deck & ordered corn fritters with avocado salsa. Fritters were ok but needed spice for my taste, a little bland. Enjoyed the salsa & double shot flat whites very good

The food and atmosphere of the café is lovely. You can feed a family of 4 with 2 pizzas made in their pizza oven. The coffee is good too. Will definitely be going back.

Great place located away from the cluster 150m down the road. The menu is really interesting and only let down by being over priced. This will not stop me coming back.<br/>The stuff are friendly but don't smile much.<br/>Overall a good average place- comfortable, roomy, a bit of road noise led to a 3. will be back to monitor its progress

Good breakfast range and location on Blackwood Street. Friendly staff and variety of drinks (fridge) options is ideal. Night pizza menu good too but miss the old tapas menu.

I visited here for Saturday lunch and sat out the back on the lovely deck. While it’s quite loud from the Samford Road traffic, it’s still a really nice spot to have a relaxing lunch. The lunch menu is quite small, however you can also choose from the breakfast menu which gives a few more alternatives. I chose the corn fritters with smashed avocado, tomato salsa and added haloumi and my friend chose the chicken tacos.<br/><br/>Both meals arrived quickly and were presented really well. My corn fritters were a little blackened on the outside, however this isn’t a complaint, I thought it added extra flavour and they were quite yum! I did need to season my dish as it lacked a little bit of flavour. I also thought almost $5 for two small pieces of haloumi was a bit rich, however this seems to be the trend these days! I’m glad I added the haloumi, I felt it needed just a little bit extra to make it a proper meal. My friend’s tacos were nice, but nothing spectacular. I think a little more thought into the additional fillings it was served with, and a bit more excitement/flavour/spice in the chicken would have been good. <br/><br/>It’s a nice café in a convenient location for the locals so I will be sure to return again. I think the evening menu is a little more adventurous and it’s also great to see good beers on tap for a nice neighbourhood bar.

ION<br/><br/>I’m yet to try the dinner menu, so the following review is specific to breakfast. For folks not familiar, this cute little cottage used to be known as Valentina Cafe, until a recent change of ownership where they curiously decided to name it after an electrically charged atomic particle. Ion Cafe, there’s still time for you to be a cation instead of an anion. Let me give you some tips, and I’ll start with the positive things about the cafe: I like the coffee, the sourdough, the balsamic glaze, they way the eggs are scrambled and the generous portions of crispy bacon, your quality glassware, your friendly and attentive staff, and the beautiful open deck and bar at the back. However, your music SUCKS. Every. Single. Time. I get that roughly 80% of the population likes Ed Sheeran et al. (God help me), but please, just occasionally change the genre of your music to something other than soppy ballardy pop rubbish. Now - we need to talk about your issues with volume, capacity and proportion. I’m talking about your corn and zucchini fritters, one of your best breakfast offerings, blighted by a fundamental misuse of the above mathematical concepts. Firstly, you serve two wholesome, dense fritters which are very large, roughly 10cm in diameter and 3 cm tall, EACH (well, it appears that way). That’s a lot of fritter. Here’s the problem; they come with a teaspoon sized smear of guacamole, sour cream and salsa on only ONE of them atop a compacted bed of greens enough to feed a rabbit for a week. You don’t need to be a mathematical genius to realise why this is a very big problem. To save you the hassle, I’ve done the maths to solve your fritter problem: V = π r2 h, (disclaimer: that’s radius squared as the stupid app doesn’t allow superscript) times that by two fritters and you have V ≈ 471.24, almost 500 cubic centimetres of frickin fritters and a stingy 20-50 mls of the other key ingredients = culinary disaster. For the love of god, please fix this. I am sick of running out of condiments after the third bite. If it’s a cost issue, then just make the fritters a bit smaller so you can afford more avocado (I’m sure the average diner won’t notice they’re eating only 400 cubic centimetres of fritter instead of half a litre of the stuff). You have so much potential, Ion (no pun intended), the owner seems like a nice bloke, please don’t blow it. Mitchelton needs you!