You can't necessarily tell the quality of a restaurant by the volume of business it does. Caffe é Biscotti (C+B) is a case in point. On first appearance it is a lively, trendy, attractive CBD café, but I suspect its turnover has more to do with its location than anything else.
We were seated on the side of the dining room, next to a very long and noisy table which looked like a company lunch. In fact, the place was so full that the staff had trouble moving around the tables to serve people. They managed to provide pretty decent service nonetheless, even when it got extremely busy.
The menu was typical café fare, mains prices from about $15 to $20. I ordered the Duck Risotto with Field Mushrooms and Grilled Prosciutto ($16.50). I found it quite good, and it turned out to be the best dish we received (I don't know - since I can't actually remember ever ordering a bad risotto, this could mean that 1. my standards are too low and I wouldn't know a good risotto from rice pudding, or 2. risotto is really hard to get wrong). Dave ordered the Veal Saltimbocca with Proscuitto, Grilled Tomato, Spinach and Sage ($16.50). He was decidedly underwhelmed. The accompaniments were nice, but the veal was very plain.
Anyway, the wine helped a bit (Dave: Incognito Merlot, and me: Callanan's Road Pinot Noir, which seems to pop up everywhere these days).
For dessert, they only offered two different cakes, plus a few muffin varieties. Points against! Dave ordered the Cherry Cheesecake ($5.50) and I had a Blueberry Muffin ($2.50). The cheesecake was okay but rather small. The muffin was dry and not really worth writing about (so here I am writing about it). Disappointing.
The toilets were typical old-building-in-the-CBD toilets - narrow but functional. They were clean and stocked properly.
All in all we wouldn't say this was a bad place; if we were meeting someone and they wanted to eat here, we wouldn't mind. But it falls well below the recent standards we've been treated to at Friday Lunch.
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Dave's summary: "I'd really rather not go back to work now."
Probability that we will return: 25 / 42
Note that the probability rating is affected by the fact that there are hundreds of places to eat around here.