Ladro, Greville St.

This popular Melbourne pizza restaurant just opened up in a new location in Prahran.  The crowd at this side of town is very different from the super alternative regulars at the Gertrude St restaurant.  Insert spray tans, tight clothes and oodles of flashy skin.  Obviously this relates more so to the people walking past the restaurant, rather than the uber cool trendy kids inside.   This place is slightly pretentious, notably the Italian movie running on its website.  It works though.  I haven't had a chance to try the food but have heard amazing reviews.  They do lots of snacks and woodfired pizzas throughout the day which are very popular for a Sunday afternoon lunch. 

 (Coffee is served in super cute white cups.)

http://www.ladro.com.au/

Comme

Down a very clean Melbourne Lane, just off Collins St is this beautiful restaurant and bar.  Clearly it was not designed for breakfasts, and seems to be a lot more popular for dinners and drinks.  Nevertheless, it is a great breakfast spot.  Quiet, with very attentive waiters, the service at Comme really does shine.  Despite the restaurant being near empty for the entire duration of our epically long four hour breakfast, the staff were more than happy to let us sit in the corner and enjoy our morning, interrupting us occasionally just to refill our water glasses and offer us more coffees. 

The coffee is delicious, creamy and rich.  The perfect start to the morning.

The food was very simple and the menu quite limited, but it delivered everything in elegant style with a focus on strong flavours.  My cheese omelette was perhaps slightly overdone in terms of strong cheese flavours (a sentence I never imagined myself to say!).  This may suit others though.

The grand staircase out the front, accompanied by a giant mirror adds to the glamour of this restaurant. 

The actual highlight for me is the beautiful sign for Comme.  I love the writing and the choice of a striking neon yellow/green sign.  It is a treat to walk down Alfred Place just to see the sign in the doorway!

Capital Kitchen, Chadstone Shopping Centre.

Chadstone's recent renovations promise all kinds of luxury at the 'Fashion Capital'.  Whilst the new stores are new and very shiny, they somehow lack the glamour of Collins St, and sit oddly amongst cheaper chain stores and people going about doing the weekly groceries in tracksuit pants.  The hoards of bronzed teenage girls gawking outside these stores with their gangster boyfriends detracts further from the experience.

Walking into Tiffany & Co was particularly horrific, as I watched a woman argue with the storeperson about the authenticity of her charm bracelet despite it having fake diamantes falling off the side of the label.  All class.

Capital Kitchen is nestled amongst all this.  It feels like a dressed up Food Court, with tables packed in there and generic decorations brought in straight from Ikea.  The random placement of cookbooks and random ornaments like lemons and bread baskets is highly unoriginal but works in the sense that it gives the feel of it being a giant homewares store with a cafe in the midst of it.  (mmm much like Ikea actually.)

It it quite a pleasant cafe though, with a wide range of sandwich and sweet food choices and efficient service.  The coffee is solid, as are the muffins and sandwiches.  My coffee companion (a strapping young man who is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime to America), complained about being served his peppermint tea with a tea bag despite the cafe's pretense of being a more upmarket cafe, with prices to match.

My favourite thing about Capital Kitchen is definitely its logo. I love the big white writing and unnecessary use of a full stop.

All in all though, it is definitely a massive step up from most other food establishments in Chadstone, the majority being fast food in Chadstone's multiple food courts.  It does feel removed from the rest of the Shopping Centre and doesn't have the same trapped stuffy feeling that one gets from most of the other cafes in Chadstone.  Capital Kitchen does appear to be trying a little bit too hard but this only makes it more of a perfect fit for Chadstone.

My favourite things for today:

• Lemon/Honey Water
• Yellow Scarves
• Pilates
• Egg Tarts (so good!)
• The ACCC
• Girls whose names end with 'bean' :)

Baretto, Melbourne University, Carlton

This is by far the nicest of the Brunetti's chains at Melbourne University.  It lacks the rude disinterest of the staff at Porta Via and the bland lack of creativity at the terribly named Commercio Bar.  It is a very long cafe with a pleasant view of leafy Grattan Street.  It is busy enough to create a nice but professional uni atmosphere without the clutter and crowding of some of the other cafes on campus.  The food is the simple, overpriced set of sandwiches and sweets from Brunettis and the coffee is simple but done quite well.  A place that doesn't appear to be trying too hard, unlike everything else on campus.

Batch Espresso, Balaclava.

Locations of all the cheese farms in New Zealand are listed in a massive poster on the side of this Kiwi inspired cafe in a lively strip in Balaclava.  A place so passionate about its cheese was always going to win my heart. 

The name Batch apparently comes from the New Zealand word for 'holiday home, 'Bach'.  This means a small, modest holiday house.  This place certainly has a very casually put together, comfortable holiday feel to it with all the dated New Zealand souvenirs and posters, as well as the tips jar being labelled, 'Tups'.  

I ate a delicious fluffy omelette filled with salami, fetta and a generous slather of pesto for breakfast at Batch today.  Pesto really does make everything taste amazing! They also had a wide selection of bagel selections on the menu, perhaps freshly baked from Glicks Bakery just down the road.  (more about Glicks later..)  

The staff are quite inflexible with the menu and a waitress pointedly refused to even consider the possibility of adding mushrooms to an order.  She sadly informed us that menus were on the morning breakfast menu and they were no longer serving from that menu today.  (It was only 15 minutes after and I wasn't quite sure why it was that hard to just add mushrooms to the order when they were probably just sitting there in the kitchen!)  The efficient service made up for this though and we were brought our very nutty flavoured coffees just minutes after ordering them!  Clearly the staff here  are very serious about their coffees.

Carlisle Street in Balaclava is a wonderful little street to visit with all kinds of interesting quirky second hand shops and lots of boutiques with handmade crafts and clothing by emerging fashion designers.  A few other breakfast places on the strip are wonderful too, including the much loved Las Chicas and famous Glicks Bakery.  More on Balaclava soon. 

Federal Coffee Palace

The view from Elizabeth St.

Tucked into the side of the GPO building, this little cafe has a wide selection of fresh sandwiches, croissants and various pastries, as well as many gluten free treats for the coeliacs amongst us.  

The service was a little bit too keen for my liking, with waiters constantly hovering around our table, crossing the fine line between attentive service and just being an annoying interruption to lunch.  Being asked to pay whilst sipping on my coffee was a creepy experience. The waiter insisted on breathing over my shoulder and awkwardly suggested that I should probably pay for my coffee now.  A slightly unnerving experience which left me wondering whether he was in fact someone off the street trying to scam money from me.

The food was incredibly fresh though.  I enjoyed the fresh flavours of avocado, tomato and bocconcini on olive bread.  I have heard great things about all the little pastries and look forward to going back and trying some of these.   There appears to be a wide range of sandwich selections with all kinds of grainy, crusty breaded delights to try next time.  

Bread love. xx

Hawthorn Cafes: Porgie and Mr Jones and Liar Liar.

I had a very long and lazy Tuesday where I had two back to back breakfasts.  A very relaxing day indeed.

Liar Liar

I started the morning off at Liar Liar.  I was unfortunately seated next to a screaming baby.  I requested a table change and ended up sitting next to a delightfully polite and well dressed toddler, who was sipping her mini coffee and posing for photos on her Mum's iphone.  Somewhere between too cute and a little bit sickenening.

Despite being a very new coffee drinker, I do love the coffee at Liar Liar.  They make it exceptionally well with beautiful froth flowers and leaves on top.  Nothing like coffee art to perk me up.

After a very long wait, I finally got the scrambled eggs with fetta and spinach.  The previously generous helpings had been whittled down to a miniscule serve.  I probably didn't need a fat stack of fetta for breakfast but it would have been nice.

Porgie and Mr Jones

Ah, Porgie.  This could be my favourite breakfast spot ever.  Loved by most, hated by a few select friends.  From the uber cool staff with just a little bit too much attitude for Hawthorn to the chairs hanging on the walls to the cute little cakes and healthy balls, this place is amazing.  I had a long chat with the lovely girl who works there, and then proceeded to wait for my usually quite punctual blonde friend (three guesses who that is), on the busy communal table while admiring the random 'artwork'.  Heart cut outs and random words on the wall, yes please. 

I was unfortunately too full to enjoy my favourite meal at Porgies (Mr Jones Scrambles, VERY wet scrambled eggs with lashings of goats cheese and spinash-amazing), but instead settled for a cold and refreshing guava juice.  Blonde Friend #1, ordered the Dukkah Eggs.  I think they were poached eggs on grainy bread with spinach, and red pepper pesto...I also vaguely remember something about hazelnut...yum!

We then proceeded to spend the next 3 hours there, watching the place go from being severely over crowded to completely empty at closing time. 

Breakfast food at Porgie is amazing.  The smashed avocado on toast is also a highlight. The pides are also very well made. The service varies from amazing to slow and very average depending on the day/time. 

Anything that involves more complicated cooking is definitely something to be avoided.  A friend's recently made a disastrous food choice of a soup textured risotto...

Overall though, Porgies is the best!  Warm, cosy, cute and delicious. An all time favourite.