Cafes and restaurants to visit

STREAT, Flemington

~ culinaldi ~ 1 Comment

Last year I met some lovely new friends at an Exotic Persian and Middle Eastern cooking class at Spice Bazaar in Seddon (www.spicebazaar.com.au), whom I enjoyed cooking with and getting to know while eating our shared achievements. Since then I have been extremely fortunate to have Oz and Mez supporting my culinary adventures and their enthusiastic and positive comments about my blog.

When Oz suggested that I should be considering STREAT in Flemington for a catch-up and new breakfast destination, it was just a matter of when. After negotiating restricted public transport and new train routes on a national holiday, I arrived slightly late and harried but it was great to see my friends again and relax in STREAT’s warmth and ambience.

After a couple of weeks of selecting savoury dishes, I was in desperate need of something sweet although I did think very long and hard about the Beirut brekky with twice-cooked crispy sumac eggs, fatoush salad, labne and za’atar. After some deliberation, the description of the French toast with fresh peaches, bourbon salted caramel, cinnamon crème fraiche and pecan brittle was too powerful to resist.

French toast with fresh peaches, bourbon salted caramel, cinnamon creme fraiche and pecan brittle - STREAT, Flemington
French toast with fresh peaches, bourbon salted caramel, cinnamon creme fraiche and pecan brittle – STREAT, Flemington

Where do I start? I tackled the fresh White peaches first which were fresh and crunchy; its best to get the healthy stuff over and done with! The French toast was delicious with almost a bread-and-butter pudding type consistency that pulled apart easily. The cinnamon creme fraiche was light and fluffy with the spices permeating occasionally. Whilst I couldn’t detect any bourbon (which might be due to my finely honed Shiraz taste buds), the salted caramel was thick, sweet and delicious. And lucky last, the pièce de résistance was the pecan brittle. In my mind’s eye, I was worried that trying to shatter the praline with my knife and fork was going to send shards flying across the cafe, Pretty Woman style, but I managed to contain everything to my own plate. The soft pecan nuts and the hardened sugar was a lovely combination and perfect for mopping up left-over fraiche and caramel sauce.

Every dish that I saw being served at STREAT looked spectacular and stylishly presented. The hash brown on Oz’s “The Hunter” breakfast (poached eggs,           bacon, mushrooms, carluccio sausage, hash brown and tomato relish on sourdough) looked stunning and I secretly wished that I could make something like that.

STREAT is a social enterprise that seeks to provide homeless youth with a supported pathway to long-term careers in the hospitality industry. They run street cafes in Melbourne where youth get their hospitality training.

http://streat.com.au/food/flemington

I’m looking forward to the next culinary adventure with Oz and Mez with a Barefoot Bowls night and BBQ co-hosted by the Flemington-Kensington Bowls Club & STREAT Cafe on February 21. Check out respective websites for more details.

The Old Barber Shop, Richmond

~ culinaldi ~ 1 Comment

Coming home on the tram after last weekend’s breakfast adventure, I spied a busy little cafe within an old home near Bridge Road and remembered that was another place that I wanted to try out. After a little investigating on Urbanspoon, I found out the name and address and made a beeline for The Old Barber Shop.

A friend of mine told me that the kitchen was not quite equipped as other cafes so I knew that my beloved French Toast wasn’t going to be on the menu, but that gave me the opportunity to explore and try something new.

After reviewing the menu, I selected the Croque Madame. I’ve had a Croque Monsieur in Paris but this was a whole new ball game for me. I’m slightly fussy with my eggs, as my friends and family well know and when ordering I will ask for my eggs to be hard poached or avoid them all together!

Croque Madame - The Old Barber Shop, Richmond
Croque Madame – The Old Barber Shop, Richmond

When my dish arrived, I nearly had heart palpitations when I saw the form of the “fried” egg. It distinctly didn’t look fried whatsoever but sending it back to the kitchen didn’t appear to be an option … more on that later.

I’ve had beef tartare with raw egg, so it was time to toughen up and eat. With much trepidation, I started on the outskirts of my meal and dug in. The bread was thick with molten cheese and tender succulent ham and was absolutely delicious … but I was eating closer to that egg and I didn’t see any chance of escape. The underneath of the egg was well cooked and letting my egg rest was a good decision, and was not quite so liquid when I was prepared to eat it. Runny egg or not, my dish was delicious and deceptively indulgent and I almost sighed when there was nothing left to eat.

Maybe Jamie Oliver is to blame but I’m starting to enjoy food served on wooden boards, and I enjoyed the pleasure of physically tearing away at my breakfast and the thick toast and hardening cheese with only the brute strength I could muster on a Saturday morning, without the clink and clunk of steel on china.

Croque Madame - The Old Barber Shop, Richmond
Croque Madame – The Old Barber Shop, Richmond

Now dare I mention the service … something is not quite right when you have to ask for the menu; to call an attendant over to ask for another coffee, and then watch them walk away while your empty plate and original drained coffee cup remain on the table before you; and then walk to into the cafe some ten minutes later and remind the same person that you are only standing there so you can pay for what you ate … and it’s not all that busy!

Putting that aside, the ambience of sitting on the front verandah, the delicious coffee and indulging in warm bread, ham and cheese was a wonderful start to my weekend.

Bendigo Street Milk Bar, Burnley

~ culinaldi ~ 2 Comments

A brand new year has begun and one of my goals is to start visiting the list of cafes that I’ve been building up in the back of my mind on the “must do” list. I can’t remember where I had read about the small cafe/milk bar in Bendigo Street in Richmond/Burnley that was open for weekend breakfast, but it was always somewhere where I wanted to visit and I figured that if I was to do anything of purpose on the weekend, then that was my intended destination.

Resolutely, I set off on Saturday morning and negotiated the two trams I needed to take to get to Bendigo Street. I can’t describe the exhilaration I always feel when the sun is shining, I’m exploring new neighbourhoods with tree-lined streets, anticipating my first hot skinny latte and finally visiting a place I’ve always wanted to visit. Intrigued by the renovated workers cottages and the new urban development under construction in Bendigo Street, I finally spied the quaint milk bar on the corner, market umbrellas and tables outside ready for patrons.

Walking into Bendigo Street Milk Bar is like stepping into another world – tranquil with soft jazz playing on the iPod, a myriad of tables, soft furnishings and old-world charm, newspapers for sale, a counter and display fridge laden with homemade food, another room on the mezzanine level with more tables and chairs – it was almost a feast for the eyes. I think it was just fortuitous that being January, I could still walk in and take my pick of tables.

Because it is January and some of the staff were taking leave, the breakfast menu had been reduced to a single page, but despite only several dishes to choose from, the corn fritters with avocado salsa, rocket and poached eggs seemed to be the most obvious choice.

 

Corn fritters with avocado salsa, rocket and poached eggs (Bendigo Street Milk Bar, Burnley)
Corn fritters with avocado salsa, rocket and poached eggs (Bendigo Street Milk Bar, Burnley)

I gather from all the social media involving this cafe that the homemade corn fritters are the dish du jour and it’s obvious why. Beautifully presented, stunning colours and a generous dish, I was deliriously happy to be its next victim! After taking several photos, my first mouthful of corn fritter was heavenly – an unusual red colour (I almost wondered if Thai red curry paste was the secret ingredient!), with red capsicum and bright yellow corn kernels – well cooked and not mushy which seems to be the offering of some of the most recent places that I have been to lately. My eggs were poached exactly as I like them and requested, sitting of a bed of chunky homemade avocado salsa, and rocket glistening in olive oil. Almost a complete surprise was the goats cheese dispersed within the dish, which was soft and creamy and extremely delicious, but a definite must although it is not included in the meal description.

Although I waited a good ten minutes for my first coffee to appear and there were only 4 other customers in view, you know when you are in a special-kind-of-place when you are compelled to whip out the iPhone at lightning speed and try to Shazam the jazzed up version of Crowded House playing seductively in the background (Curtis Stigers’ rendition of “Into Temptation” if you are intrigued) and all is forgiven.

My only concern that now distresses me is that if it has taken me so long to get here, how soon can I come back?