The Shipping Lane

Nice little café facing the beach. Nice atmosphere and great coffee. Service was friendly and swift.

The actual best thing about this café was the service! It was a busy Sunday morning and a lovely girl working there brought us in a small table from outside to squeeze us in which was above and beyond!
The menu looked amazing and I found it hard to pick what to eat and I ended up with avocado, cherry tomato and feta on toast with a delicious banana smoothie with almond milk. It wasn’t bad for the money either but I had breakfast envy for my friends potato stack with haloumi, I’ll be doing that next time!
It’s a small café but they fit in quite a lot of people and the food didn’t take too long to come out. I’d like to come back and try a few more things from the menu and hopefully on a nicer day, sit outside and see the beach!

Some of the best sushi I’ve ever tasted! Potato stack & chorizo beans are my favourite

Love this place — the food is great and just healthy enough to stay delicious! I enjoy coming here for brunch — my criticisms though relate to the prices which are high (about $ 24) for meals where you have to order at the counter and are on the smaller side compared to other places. Staff are a bit brusque sometimes but most are great and the quality of ingredients is good. Definitely try it! It’s better than some overrated places in Freo.

Nice location but average service, high prices and average food — probably wouldn’t come back unless I really had to… The poached eggs were cold and almost overcooked, the hashbrowns were dry and had been sitting too long. All in all my meal just wasn’t pleasant but at least it was edible. The other was the stack and the big breakfast and well others liked theirs and finished them off. The coffee was weak and the iced mocha was a bit grainy for some reason.

Great spot where we enjoyed brunch. Friendly efficient service and tasty food. Although it was busy we had no delays which was great. I had the eggs bene with mushrooms which was nice enough, my partner had the shipping lane breakfast which was delicious!

Sorry shipping lane but you’ve dropped your standards. I enjoyed my first experience a couple of months ago but the last one was not good. No longer table service and the restaurant layout is strange because of that, menu is average and sushi is expensive for what you get.

Great food and serivce. Relaxed vibe. Have been back a few times and never dissapointed.

I heard good things from a friend who regularly visits so I thought I should check it out. I went for brunch on a late Tuesday morning– parking was easy enough, the staff were attentive and very helpful, and the food was brought out swiftly.
My friend and I ordered the avocado guacamole on rye, both with a side of eggs. It was slightly disappointing that they weren’t already part of the dish, but definitely not a deal breaker. The produce was fresh and brunch was overall a winner. Great location, right by the beach, and fairly well priced.
Will definitely be back again.

Great sushi and vibe. Epic views of Leighton beach. A bit more low key than Bib and tucker, on price and attire. It’s BYO as well.

Absolutely loved the feel of the place with its expansive windows and shipping and nautical art cleverly positioned around the café. Buckets of colourful fresh flowers and potted plants dotted around added colour and interest. The main counter made from a repurposed shipping container really sealed the aesthetics.
Now for the important stuff:
My meal of baked beans in home-​made tomato sauce with spicy chorizo and sweet potato and poached egg was pleasant without being outstanding. The rich depth of flavour I expected in the tomato sauce wasn’t there, so the dish was adequate but lacking something I can’t quite put my finger on.
J’s meal of slow poached salmon, avocado, poached egg, roasted potato and spinach looked healthy, green and fabulous. And while all the ingredients were fresh, the dominant feature was a massive bowl of baby spinach leaves. Take away the spinach and there wasn’t a whole lot of other stuff left. Popeye would be envious.
K probably drew the longest straw with her choice of bruschetta with a side of mushrooms. Bacon lovers will salivate over the generous serve of perfectly cooked bacon, perched on top of another forest of greens, sundried and cherry tomatoes, avocado and pesto on Turkish bread.
I was lucky and arrived before the others so I got my long mac within 10 minutes of ordering. My friends weren’t so lucky and had to wait 40 minutes — no I am not exaggerating — for their coffees, despite hailing the wait staff several times to ask what the hold up was. Eventually the manager came over and apologised (by this time we’d almost finished our breakfasts), explaining that with one coffee machine and people coming in to order takeaway coffees, their barista just couldn’t keep up. Now for most coffee aficionados, being forced to wait until 10.30 for their first coffee of the day is cruel and unusual punishment. And a 40 minute wait in a café is unacceptable by anyone’s standards. They deducted the price of the coffees off our bill, but still, it really isn’t good enough and detracted from what was an otherwise pleasant experience.
If your café is that busy churning out coffees in the morning, buy another coffee machine! Don’t keep your dine-​in customers waiting 40 minutes while you serve your takeaway customers. Ain’t rocket science is it? A point deducted for this reason, because the Shipping Lane really needs to lift its coffee game. An ambient venue and ocean views don’t compensate for this major let down.

I went her for breakfast with a large group of girls and the waitress was so patient with us. She found a high table for us and saw that we were squished so let us know when another table became available. They were really efficient with our orders with our coffees arriving swiftly. Mine was extra hot like I like it. They use blacklist coffee and make theirs really strong. So those that like their coffee without sugar and creamy — this coffee is not for you.
I was looking forward to their potato stack but they had changed their menu to something more boring. I got their avocado toast with feta and poached eggs on the side. Funnily enough only one piece of toast was smeared with avocado and the other toast was bare. No butter either. Poached eggs were nice.
One of the other girls got pancakes that came with miso caramel. Was pretty delicious.
The view of the water is nice and if the weather was nicer would have definitely sat outside.
Average brekkie menu, great service and good views. :-)

Hmm, not overly impressed with my visit today, so it was a surprise for me to ready the reviews afterward that indicated the place has been operating for enough time to iron out inconsistencies. I can’t quite put my finger on what didn’t sit right with me. The décor is wonderful, with a shipping container decal framing a large mirrored wall that really opens the place up down one end, with a wonderful, simple yet effective mural opposite. It has that industrial open ceiling thing going on, with exposed ducting and beams and a couple of fancy schmancy light fittings, but then they’ve added carpet to deaden the noise that usually accompanies such a fit out. Nice work.
The menu has a small selection and this is actually a bonus for me under normal circumstances. In my humble (very humble) opinion, too many new places are trying too hard with a raft of selections on the menu they can’t really handle, which results in just ordinary presentation and taste. But Shipping Lane has only a few selections [on the breakfast menu] which lends to the notion they will execute them all well. Not so. There is only one vegetarian option, besides toast. The poached eggs were unevenly cooked — hard one side, runny the other, across the one inch yolk. How does that even happen? The advertised «avocado guacamole» was actually just smashed avo with far too much lemon juice. Just say that on the menu. Note: is guacamole anything other than based on avocado? The toast was a bloody doorstop and only one piece had the avo on it. The other piece was a dry wad. I had to ask for butter (and it came in a packet). The advertised feta portion wasn’t even enough to assess whether it was too salty or not. The coffee was very creamy and smooth, but drink it straight away or it will be too cold. I mean as soon as it arrives and in one gulp.
Once again Perth has produced a venue in a kick ass location (you can’t beat beachside) but it hasn’t quite made the grade to meet the expectation. Man or woman cannot function on the view alone.
I can’t see salty Summer bodies in there, dropping sand all over the carpet, either. Will they enforce a dress code in the warmer months? Good luck with that.

What a gorgeous location. Delicious food. Excellent service. Have you tried breakfast here? You just have to keep going back. For such a new restaurant this gem is going well.

I have previously stopped in here for coffee and it has always been good, today I thought I would try the breakfast and now I wish I didn’t. The coffee was still ok, however the service was below par, my green juice tasted like it had lime cordial in it and my bruschetta lacked all the flavour, bacon was under cooked, and there was a mountain of mixed lettuce leaves on it — not how envisage the dish that’s for sure.

Coffee is bitter, they have to change their coffee bean choice immediately! Almost as bad as Vittoria coffee beans, which I rate the worst of all time. Desserts are delectable! Staff are bubbly, friendly, and very helpful and professional.

Seriously delicious.
Interesting combinations.
Strange interior for such fine dining.
$ 10 per bottle corkage (unlicensed) is a ripoff.
Well worth a go if you feeling cashed up.

Driving up along the manicured streets where Bib & Tucker and The Shipping Lane both sit, it almost feels like I’m on holiday in some beautiful coastal town. The restaurant is open and airy, with outdoor seating for those of you who want to bring your pups up to keep you company after play time at the nearby dog beach.
Food doesn’t take too long to come out at The Shipping Lane, with the ordering system having people come up to order and pay at the till. It seems this is the standard these days for brunch venues which initially I wasn’t a fan of but I actually really like now — it gives you the freedom to up and leave at your own choice without waiting for the staff to settle bills etc.
The crispy potato stack ($ 21.00) is a potato cake sitting atop of a mint sour cream and is topped with avocado, haloumi, pumpkin jam, crispy potato skin, quinoa and greens. There’s also some nuts thrown into the mix for texture and added flavour.
Everyone that tried this dish agreed it was kind of the bees knees. If bees even have knees. We can tick off the criteria required for a successful dish with the elements involved. It’s creamy from the avocado, sweet from the pumpkin jam, starchy from the potato and salty from that giant slab of haloumi. The potato cake in particular requires additional praise because it is the business. So full of flavour that I wish I could replicate this at home to have whenever I feel the cravings come on.

Food and coffee were both ok but the service was terrible. Water was hot because it came in a glass bottle straight out of the dishwasher, coffee was cold and took half an hour, table wasn’t cleared for nearly half an hour after we sat down, food items forgotten (milk for granola, which took another 10min) and items on the menu (juice) sold out at 9am on a Tuesday… I feel sorry for the waitresses. Never seen anywhere so understaffed.

A new addition to the freo scene.
Located close to (across a carpark) from Bib and Tucker, this recent addition to the Fremantle dining scene seems to have it pretty much figured out. Set a bit further back from the beach next to a new apartment complex, what is on offer here is respectable food and drink with professional service to match.
The brunch menu offers a mix of brekkie options along side other more lunch time orientated offerings. I opted for the burger with chips and wasn’t disappointed. The pulled pork was respectable and the brekkie was apparently decent too.
An interesting option on the drinks menu was cocktails made with your liquor (that’s right — YOUR liquor). As they don’t have their own liquor license yet, you can bring in your choice of poison and have the bar staff whip up a concoction of your choosing (for a fee of course).
The Shipping Lane also offers a separate sushi menu which is a rarity in town and the quality of this was reported to be respectable also. With the beach within eye shot and the ability to hide in the airconditioning when the temperature is a little bit too high this place will be a welcome addition to Fremantle and is already drawing in the crowds.
If your in the area its a cool place worth looking into.