Crunch

When we first moved into the house where we now live, my oldest and dearest friend dropped in for a cuppa and viewing. I did the two-minute tour of the house and being the middle of the day, we decided to walk down to High Street for coffee. Taking the shortest walk, we got to High Street next to Brown's Motors, opposite Crunch. Pointing at Crunch, Mark said, "let's go there." By complete coincidence, Crunch was owned by Mark's sister Jenny.

Seussian Eggs

I'd first met Jenny decades ago when I was a gormless teenager and she was one of the few groovy adults I'd met. We met again some years later in the late 1980's when Felicity and I moved into a house in Tanner Grove in Northcote and Jenny lived a few streets away. I remembered Jenny as cool and having a relaxed charm back then, and she was the same at Crunch in the early 2000's. We ate there a couple of times after, chatting briefly and always smiling.

Crunch changed hands a year or so ago and Jenny and her family moved to Queensland. The coffee's still pretty good, but despite being the closest great coffee to our front door, I can't say we frequent Crunch. There's no particular reason, mind you, it's just not something we do

So this time was the first for a while we'd been to Crunch but it still felt familiar and welcoming. The coffee was really, really good (which makes such a difference at about 11.00am); the food was wonderful, and the service was OK.

F had the Seussian "Greens, Egg and Ham", which was a cross between Eggs Florentine and Eggs Benedict. Perched on slivers of Turkish bread was some spinach puree, acceptable ham and a couple of perfectly poached eggs, complemented by a small dish of lovely rich Bearnaise sauce with *just* the right balance of acidity.

I had a BLT augmented with avocado (aka "the BLAT"), again served in a modest Turkish roll with a thick layer of mixed baby salad leaves and some freshly made mayo. It wasn't intense, and the balance of bacon and tomato/avocado/salad erred towards the herbivorous. We got everything we ordered without hesitation but without a lot of good cheer either.

BLAT!

Crunch has great coffee, good cafe food and a view from one side of High Street to a slightly more appealing side. It's a funny, empty kind of room that feel like a small box with some modest, modern Scandinavian furniture and few pretensions. Crunch is groovy without trying too hard, in a strip where 1970's sparkle Laminex is revered and mixed crap chairs are de rigeur. Even putting aside the distant friendly connections (that have long since expired), I really enjoy Crunch and the warm, familiar sensation I get when I sit down.