Friday, February 19, 2010

Close to home. Er, work.

We have a little guilty pleasure, at work. Downstairs from our office is our regular coffee haunt, the large food-hall style cafe Hydra.

Every morning at 7:30am, Nick and Sam would cheerily serve very good coffee with a smile and a twenty word download of the night before. Occasionally, we are enticed to eat breakfast or lunch, and rarely are we disappointed.

On this occasion (the end of December), we (WP and I) decided to stop in for a working breakfast. We were celebrating some small victory, and we decided to splash out on the chef's brekky special. Huevos Rancheros.

Avacado, jalapenos, refried beans, salsa, sour cream, a tortilla, and eggs poached just SO, it was such a surprise I instantly decided to make it my post for the week.

Perhaps it was also the sense of victory, or the comfort of home, but it so far ranks very highly in my estimations of breakfast venues in Melbourne. The great irony however, is that the chef hates cooking it so much he's now taken it off the menu!

He may make it for you, if you ask very nicely, but just make sure you don't tell him I said it was ok.

7/10 + .5 for my personal bias :)

Needs a little tweeking

If I only go to the big name brekky venues, I tell myself quite often, then I couldn't find the hidden gems. The one's you're all talking about.

Tweek, on Bridge Road, is not a hidden gem.

It is hidden though; it took me twenty minutes to find it on an otherwise quite flashy street.

For a venue ostensibly set up to deal with the breakfast crowd, there were two immediate issues; we ordered two different types of breakfasts that they'd run out of (not Meredith again!) and when I finally ordered a mexican style breakfast wrap, it just wasn't that nice. Yucky eggs.

Service wise, we might as well have been at a lunch cafe in Sunshine, for all that they seemed to want us there.

I went with my business partner and one of our advisors for a breakfast meeting, and while we got what we needed out of the venue (i.e. something that didn't tempt us into a pre-midday beer), everything else was a little limp.

4.5 / 10 (my lowest yet?)

Tweek away.

Birdman, eating

I made a rookie mistake in preparing to eat at this next venue, a popular brekky spot on Gertrude Street in Fitzroy; the much-venerated Birdman Eating.

I read reviews first.

Not that there is anything wrong with people writing reviews about breakfast venues. Or reading them! In fact, suggesting that there was would probably put me in the category of such famous hypocrites as George W Bush, Dubya, and George Bush Jnr.

A little like taking Trip Advisor at face value though - which I've done, with regret - I read about coffees taking forever, terrible service, bad food, and an awful atmosphere, and I believed them.

So when KB and I arrived for our breakfast foray, I was pre-prepared to be pessimistic. On the occasion that I visited, however, I am happy to say that it was instead a briskly paced, well timed and pleasantly proper place.

Coffee, for instance, was great and served quickly. Cranky hangover types were dealt with with smiles and alacrity, and while there was an unaccountably perturbed table ("can't you do something about this noise?" My answer: "would you like us all to be a bit quieter, you little tw&t, all thirty of us?" Her answer "Would you like to sit outside instead sir?") the hustle and bustle felt like a well-oiled machine.

And the food? KB's sauteed mushrooms and the parmesan toast, just fine. No complaints. The big however?

I have an issue with the baked eggs. I think they're trying too hard. When I compare the baked eggs at Birdman Eating (any of the four varieties, but on this occasion I had the Mediterranean) to Liar Liar, or Cumulus... they're a poor second cousin. And these meals are clearly the piece de resistance of this little place, the clever trick, the novel idea.

But they're just average. OK. Not mind-blowing.

So while I was impressed by so much about this place, and perhaps because of and not in spite of the reviews I'd read before, the big bang was instead a fizzle. I'll give it 7.5 out of 10, with .5 off for trying too hard. 7/10.

Guys, do ONE style of baked eggs exceptionally well!

Ignoring the obvious

Ok. So we're going to ignore the fact that I've failed to post since December 13. Just... pretend it dídn't happen.

I have been eating, you know. Breakfasts even. Just not posting.