breakfast/brunch

Simply Spanish

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It’s Friday, and I’m home today! This is not a fun at home day, this is more I’m home because there’s tradies on my roof and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT NOISE? Are they fixing the roof or whacking pigeons with a baseball bat? It sounds like the roof is going to cave in. Hopefully a spot of food blogging will take my mind off it…

I think I may have mentioned this previously, but South Melbourne Market is my favourite place to go for fruit and veg. It started operating in 1867, and went through a refurbishment and upgrade over the past couple of years. As part of the upgrade, new food stalls opened up on the Cecil Street frontage.

We popped into one of those newish ones, Simply Spanish, for brunch a few weeks back. The brunch menu had all the usual favourites, but with a little twist. For example, bacon and eggs came with a caramelised onion and tomato relish, scrambled eggs were served with sliced chorizo and eggs benedict had a saffron lime hollandaise.

Unfortunately we arrived too early for paella – a massive pan had just started cooking when we were seated. The smells kept wafting our way as we had our brunch, making me wish we had shown up just a little bit later!

Simply Spanish

Instead of paella, I had the Gypsy Eggs – soft poached eggs rolled in a Middle Eastern dukkah served with wilted spinach on grilled sourdough and a romesco spread ($15.50).

Simply Spanish

The eggs were perfectly poached – check out that oozy goodness! The sprinkled dukkah helped lift the eggs and complemented the capsciumish tasting spread on the toast.

Simply Spanish

Both of the boys had the Spanish claypot eggs with smoked chorizo ($16.50). This was a poached egg in a tomato and herb salsa, served in a claypot with toasted sour dough. This looked rich and full of flavour, although I noticed that the salsa seemed quite watery.

Simply Spanish

Unfortunately the coffee was a little lacking – I found it too sour to drink, much less enjoy! But the food was fine, and I’m sure that we will visit again. Perhaps next time we’ll time it right and try the paella!


Simply Spanish
116 Cecil Street,
South Melbourne 3205
Phone: 03 9682 6100

Brunches: Bunyip, Red Star, Panette and El Mirage

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Bunyip coffee

Bunyip

We seem to visit South Melbourne every couple of weeks, probably because I like going to the market there. We tend to have brunch before visiting the South Melbourne market, and recently we brunch at Bunyip. Bunyip is located in an old Victorian, which looks like it once may have been a house. It was a glorious day, and we ended up sitting outside underneath a couple of large, yellow umbrellas. I didn’t notice until I uploaded the photos to my camera, but the umbrellas gave an unpleasant tint to my pictures that I haven’t been able to totally correct. Doh!

Bunyip baked egg

I ordered the Spanish eggs ($14). Two poached eggs came in a rich napoli sauce, with chorizo and black olives. The sauce was thick and a touch spicy and the eggs were happily runny. Initially I thought there was only one egg, but there was one hidden underneath the sauce. Happy days!

Bunyip fritters

The Boys had corn fritters with roast tomato, bacon and relish ($12). I love corn fritters for brunch, and these looked pretty good.

Bunyip Cafe,
313 Coventry Street, South Melbourne,
Phone: 03 9682 5844

Ice coffee

Red Star

The scorching weather last week was a surprise, as was the fact that at Red Star I had a sweet breakfast, while Alastair had a savoury one. I started off with an iced coffee, which was large and full of milk and ice cream. It wasn’t very strong coffee wise though, which was slightly disappointing.

Big star french toast

I ordered the french toast with maple syrup ($7.50) adding grilled banana and bacon ($2.60 each). I think I could’ve skipped the banana, and I did wonder where the other half of my banana went (in the photo you can see a nub of the other half)! They were very generous with the bacon however, and that was great with the french toast. Points off for the fake maple syrup though.

Red star big brekkie

Alastair and Pat had the big breakfast which came with two eggs, bacon, sausage, hash brown, tomatoes, mushrooms and scwhob’s toast ($19). I thought it was a bit on the expensive side, even for a big brekkie. The toast was great – Pat took one bite and drooled due to the generous buttering. I ate a piece too and it was gooooooooood.

Red Star
315 Coventry Street
South Melbourne, 3205
Phone: 03 9682 1678

Panette

Panette

I have blogged about the fabulous gnocchi bolognaise previously, and Panette also do a spinach gnocchi. For some reason I haven’t noted down any details about this one, but from what I can remember the spinach gnocchi is served with a napoli sauce and topped with mozzarella.

Panette gnocchi

It’s not as light and as tasty as the other gnocchi but it’s pretty good. And if you’re watching your weight, just try and ignore the massive amount of cheese!

Caffe Panette
144 Cecil St, South Melbourne 3205 VIC
Phone: (03) 9690 2803

El Mirage coffee

El Mirage

The other weekend we were in the Brunswick East area because I had to drop by a friend’s house, and we took the opportunity to try a new cafe.

El Mirage was very busy when we arrived, and we had to wait a few minutes for a table. As we ordered, the waitress advised us that meals would take about half an hour, due to lots of people ordering at once. That was okay with us, so we ordered and waited.

Everyone in the cafe, especially the staff, seemed very trendy, and I felt like we weren’t cool enough to be there. 🙂

My long mac was very enjoyable, although I tried to delay drinking it. I knew that drinking it 30 minutes before eating would make me all jittery from the caffeine!

El Mirage gringo

Either the time went very quickly, or 30 minutes was a worst case scenario, but it didn’t seem to be too long before our food arrived. Bro and I both had the Gringo ($15) which came with poached eggs, mexican beans, tomato, bacon and “home-fries”. The eggs were soft and runny, and I loved the beans and the home-fries. I always like it when you can get something a bit different from regular eggs and toast.

El Mirage
349 Lygon St
Brunswick East
Phone: 03 9388 0966

Café Plum 4 (closed)

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We eat out a lot during the weekend. Often we’ll go out for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays, and normally at least one evening meal is eaten out as well. I try not to let us eat out too much because it gets expensive. In addition, when faced with an unhealthy option versus a healthy option, unhealthy will win out 99% of the time (if I cook, it’s easier for me to choose to make something healthy). But on the other hand, it’s something that we enjoy, so I’m not too strict about it.

Speaking of things that we enjoy, we recently went to CafĂ© Plum. I was happy that we didn’t have to settle for CafĂ© Bland again!

Omelette

I had an omelette, filled with goats cheese, spinach and caramelised onion ($13). I haven’t quite acquired the taste for goat’s cheese yet but I’m close. You know how it has that “goaty” flavour that seems to work it’s way into your nasal passages? I keep trying it and I have no doubt that I will love it eventually, just like I’ve learnt to love blue cheese and very dark, bitter chocolate. I found that the sweetness of the onions helped counteract some of that strong “goatiness” in the cheese, and I really enjoyed this omelette. I was also happy to see that it was a proper omelette – I’m not a fan of the open omelette as they tend to be dry and rubbery.

Fritters

Alastair had the corn fritters, with smoked salmon, crème fraiche and avocado ($15.90). He said that it was good, but not as good as the ones I make (he has been trained well!). It was rather large and filling though, and he couldn’t quite fit it all in.

Previous visits can be read here, here and here.

Cafe Plum
193 Flemington Rd, North Melbourne 3051
Ph: (03) 9329 8867

Cafe Plum 3 (closed)

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I like the idea of gardening. I love the idea of having a veggie patch and growing my own fruit and veg. Unfortunately, living in the inner city, we don’t have enough dirt for a veggie patch. That’s probably a good thing as I’m a terrible gardener.

I still persist though. Mostly I grow things in pots – I tend to get all excited when the weather warms up and go to the garden centre and purchase potting mix, plants, and other associated planting items. All goes well for a few weeks, then I start forgetting to water them. And it starts to get really hot. A few hardy plants survive my neglect, but mostly they shrivel and die.

It appears that I haven’t learnt my lesson yet as I recently went out and bought some more herbs. But before I did that, I had to get myself into a gardening mood, and what better way than to go for brunch at CafĂ© Plum?

Cafe Plum mushrooms

I ordered the mushroom bruschetta – roasted mushrooms mixed with fresh herbs and feta with a drizzle of balsamic syrup on sour dough toast ($9.50). I loved contrast of the salty feta against the sweet tanginess of the balsamic.

Cafe Plum pancakes

Alastair had something from the specials board – blueberry pancakes with vanilla mascarpone and maple syrup ($15.50). I had a taste – it was very sweet. I’m so not a sweet breakfast person. Al ate it all up though. It must’ve been good.

My Bro was there too, but I neglected to take a note or photo of his meal – I believe he had corn fritters which (gasp) he couldn’t finish because he was too full. Terrible effort on his part.

The breakfast definitely helped get me into the gardening spirit – 2 weekends later my herbs are still alive! Gosh, it’s amazing what regular watering does.

Read about our other visits to Cafe Plum here and here.

Cafe Plum
193 Flemington Rd, North Melbourne 3051
Ph: (03) 9329 8867

KitcCh

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Last weekend Alastair made a small bet on the NZ versus France rugby World Cup game. He bet on France (what a bad kiwi!) so we headed to Kensington Village to pick up his winnings. We stopped for brunch at KitcCh, which is across the road from the TAB.

The Boys and I have our own jargon that helps us recall things and places. We call KitcCh “the dark one” due to the dark wood panels and the painted black floor. The walls are lined with artwork that is available for purchase.

During the weekends, KitcCh does breakfast all day, but there is also a lunch menu. Since we’re late risers in the weekend, I generally have breakfast even when it’s closer to lunch time.

Kitcch

I had the Black jack cheese and baby spinach wrapped in a double smoke ham served with poached eggs, basil oil and hollandaise on english breakfast muffins ($12). It looks like eggs benedict – the cheese and baby spinach were hidden in the ham. Despite one of my eggs not being as runny as I like, it was still good. The spinach and basil oil helped cut through the fattiness of the hollandaise and egg yolk.

KitcCh coffee

Good breakfast, but the coffee was only average – mine was rather sour. I finished off with a raspberry smoothie (that I didn’t bother taking a photo of). Very yogurty, with a bare amount of sweetness, it made me happy and made up for the sour coffee.

KitcCh
512 Macaulay Rd, Kensington
(03) 9376 5694

Cafe Plum revisited (closed)

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Another weekend, another visit to Cafe Plum. This visit, there were a couple of interesting specials on the board. My Bro and I went for the specials, while Alastair had ricotta hotcakes with bacon and maple syrup.

Cafe Plum

Durkah crusted poached eggs on white bean braised with mint & chili oil

This was my Bro’s brunch (I copied the name straight from the board – a rather long title for a meal!). He said it was, “Awesome!” and gave it two thumbs up. Apparently the beans were very soft, and the mint and chili went very well together.

Cafe Plum fritters

This was my brunch – rather than vegetables cooked with mashed potato it was actually a vegetable fritter. It had diced potato, peas, pumpkin and spring onions. The poached eggs were wonderful – I wish I had taken a photo of the yolk running down the fritters. That, and I wish I hadn’t screwed up the focus. Gaah.

Another visit, another mostly good brunch. I say mostly, because one of Alastair’s hotcakes were still gooey and uncooked in the middle. Maybe the assistant cooked those!

Cafe Plum
193 Flemington Rd, North Melbourne 3051
Ph: (03) 9329 8867

Cafe Plum (closed)

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Cafe Plum

Every few weekends, you’ll often hear a conversation in my house that goes something like this:

“Should we go to a cafĂ© for brunch?”

“Okay! Where should we go?”

“Let’s go to our favourite.”

“Our favourite….?”

“You know! Our favourite cafĂ©!!”

“Ummm…”

“OUR FAVOURITE! Plum!”

“Plum! Oh, that’s my favourite! Let’s go there!”

Plum is our current cafĂ© of choice, and yet the Boys never know what I’m talking about. Sigh. It can be hard being the smart one in the house (haha).

Located across the road from the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital, CafĂ© Plum is small, but it’s cookin’. While I do enjoy a good poached egg on toast, when I go out for brunch I generally feel like something a bit different. There’s only so much eggs and toast that you can stomach before you get bored.

That’s one of the great things about Plum. The menu has more interesting things than just bacon and eggs and there’s always a couple of specials up on the board. A couple of specials that I’ve seen (and eaten): Ricotta hotcakes with smoked salmon and horse radish crème fraĂ®che, Cuban fried eggs with fried banana and chorizo, and Mozzarella in Carrozza (fried mozzarella sandwich). For sweet brunches, there’s items like pancakes with banana and French toast with a touch of orange blossom syrup. (I can’t recall the sweet brunches as well because I prefer the savoury ones!)

The regular menu has a couple of interesting items beyond the usual big breakfast, such as marsala potatoes with sausage and spinach, and soy scrambled eggs with chinese sausage.

If the cafe isn’t too busy, often the chef/owner will come out and have a chat. From the conversations we’ve had with him, it’s obvious that he is someone who is passionate about food, and loves to see others enjoy his cooking. That’s a quality that I adore, and it’s just another reason that I love his cafĂ©.

Cafe Plum
193 Flemington Rd, North Melbourne 3051
Ph: (03) 9329 8867

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