Alfio's

FIDO, courtesy wispfox

Not in High Street perhaps, but a short ride away via traditional northern suburbs transport (Vespa or a fixie), Alfio's Cafe is in Station Street in Fairfield, just up from the glorious FIDO. Alfio's is a Fairfield stalwart and was one of the oldest of the current generation of cafes. It also hasn't changed much in years - it was much the same in 2005 and 2006 (and indeed, the blackboard behind me in 2006 has exactly the same cocktail list).

Alfio's is so much part of my mental landscape of Fairlfield that I wouldn't have bothered writing about it except that I've only just discovered they serve the best mega-breakfast in the northern suburbs. Not the best breakfast all up, but certainly the best mega-breakfast in the FEB-style.

Hail King George

Alfio's call their mega FEB breakfast, "The George". It contained a pile of wilted spinach; a couple of poached eggs (slightly over-done); two slices of pale toasted baguette; some sauteed mushrooms (good but not spectacular); two halves of grilled tomato (good but with extraneous cheese on one half); a pile of crisp bacon (excellent!); a Hungarian-style paprika and garlic partly-cured sausage (brilliant!); and a lamb kofta (not a lot of flavour but cooked perfectly). It also had, buried underneath, a superfluous, freezer-bag hash brown. When I can work up the energy I'll rail against these, but honestly, who cares enough?

Oh, and there were beans. Very good. Home made, not too light and not too stodgy either - Goldilocks beans.

All in all it was, well, huge. Pretty damn good for a late breakfast verging-on-lunch. Oh, and the coffee is, and always has been, fantastic. Go there, but expect to see some of your work colleagues striding past in their Saturday morning finest. Well, that's what I saw, anyway.

Chowhound

I think it's only fair that at this stage in our relationship, dear reader, that I disclose certain editorial and research standards at Eat Our Way. Now, I know those who've been reading this blog for any length of time will find the suggestion that I have standards a little hard to fathom and may even dart off to re-read old posts looking for evidence of such. My general rule is that it takes a certain number of meals to justify an opinion, meaning a single adult journey to a venue generally requires a second validatory expedition before mere words are committed to type.

Because drinking at breakfast is cool yes it is shut up.

In this case, however, I'm going to break that rule, largely because it will be a while before we get a chance to go back, and, albeit based on scant evidence, we will be going back. So, dearest reader, understand the limitations of my opinion but recognize that I'm going to have one regardless of what you think.

I went with the smallest tribe member for a walk to the park (child exercise) followed by some a stroll up Ruckers Hill (adult exercise) to get some late Sunday breakfast. Chowhound is towards the top of the Hill on the western side, a short walk down from the town hall. It's bigger than many of its peers and is a pleasant, relaxed space that's not too high on the Wank Scale (where your lounge room gets a "zero" and sparkle laminex and mixed 1950's vinyl chairs gets an "8").

Beans, eggs, proscuitto

So I ordered the baked eggs with baked beans, proscuitto and toast with a Bloody Mary while Will had Macaroni Cheese from the menu for kidlets.

The beans were not the slow baked, rich, slightly sweetened and well cooked beans that I make at home, but were lighter, with firmer white beans in a fresh tomato sauce. Not what I was looking forward to, but not bad either - they were Kylie Minogue when I was expecting Wagner. The eggs were baked on top of these and were alright, but the yolks were a little harder than perfect and there was a splodge of uncooked white in the center. A quick stir into the beans fixed the white problem but the yolks were well beyond translucent and thus repair. The prosciutto was crisp, salty and thin. A not-at-all bad dish, although potentially improved by breaking the egg yolk into the middle of the dish where it will cook the least.

Macaroni cheese and boy

Will's macaroni cheese was generously cheesed, baconed and onioned. The onions in particular were golden and lusciously sweet, and the whole sticky ensemble was crunchily crumbed.

Everything else was tickety-boo; the staff were helpful, it was quiet and generally relaxing. So in summary, while I can't speak definitively about Chowhound, I can speak positively enough to say we'll go back and try breakfast again.

On the other hand, the name's a bit naff...

Voodoo Courtyard Cafe

Voodoo is an unassuming cafe towards the lower third of Ruckers Hill but just higher than Separation Street. With plenty of places vying for the "eclectic" label (damn their eyes!), Voodoo manages to be eclectic but comfortable, chaotic to look at and yet still relaxed. Others try hard but Voodoo just does its thing, and its thing is a vaguely Chinese look with lots of rich reds and gold framed mirrors and a comprehensive collection of what at Eat Our Way like to call "crap" - knick-knacks, curios, carvings and tchotchkes.

The Voodooistas are as charming as charming gets, well before charming gets weird.

Vegie breakfast

The "Grazer" vegetarian breakfast was couple of perfectly poached eggs on a disappointingly fluffy half-bun but the spinach and mushrooms were as good as you'd like them. The grilled tomato had an unexpected spicy sheen which caught me unawares - lovely by all means but far hotter than its modest look suggested. Will's chicken sandwich was pretty good too (as far as sandwiches go) - the chicken had just been grilled and the bread was better than my fluffy stuff. Full marks for the coffee!

Voodoo also has a tiny, narrow but very green courtyard out the back where we've enjoyed a lazy breakfast before. All in all a keeper.

What?

Maize

Maize is in the Thornbury Village section of High Street and is pretty typical of the small cafe/breakfast spots everywhere between Westgarth and Preston. Their menu is long and their coffee is good and they (like so many of their peers along High Street) pride themselves on using words like "organic" and "spelt" and "wholegrain". All good and all worthy.

Some bits of this morning's breakfast were pretty good and worthy too. The cheesy scrambled eggs in particular were creamy, cheesy and light, although there was far too much for me. But this dish was, allegedly, huevos rancheros. Described as scrambled eggs with sausage and a tomato salsa, I'd expected it to come with a tortilla, not a couple of slices of damp wholegrain bread. The sausage was sliced kranksy (or sim), well grilled and nice enough. The tomato salsa, alas, turned out to be diced tomato with a few chives. Not in the slightest bit Mexican and not even in the most subtle way was it spiced. All in all this was scrambled eggs, sausage and diced tomato and I was disappointed.

Huevos Rancheros? Nope

There's lots of competition for breakfast along here, and Maize didn't stand out as anything special. And I still want huevos rancheros...

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.

Coco Inc

In a departure from routine, after seeing Coco Inc's menu we decided breakfast looked a better option than an evening affair. Coco Inc sports a fairly standard bistro menu.

I'm a fan of the home-cooked breakfast cooked anywhere but home, and to be fair my standards have been set by a few really good places.


Coco Inc looks impressive from the street; open and stark, chocolate-brown-and-cream and strong shadows against the walls from uplighting and decorative sticks. Loudish yet smooth ambient music played - think Sade meets Massive Attack. You still awake? Sorry - my fault.

If it helps, imagine a fifty-something man with a shaved head and designer black tee-shirt. That's not to replace your thoughts of music, by the way; just to paint a picture of our fellow diners. I'm not an elegant person, and to be frank elegance and breakfast are not normally just-got-out-of-bedfellows. On the other hand, for all of its post-modern hard surfaces mixed with organic stuff (like sticks), the small child who walked nonchalantly to a power point behind a couch, plugged in her game console and slowly sank out of sight seemed to fit right in.


Service vacillated slowly between languid and perfunctory, tinged with the occasional harried look. Breakfast was ordered and arrived some 40 minutes later. W's came well before the others, giving us plenty of time to admire his blueberry pancakes.

They were fluffy, pancreas-burstingly sweet and had been dealt a generous hand of berries. Maple syrup was provided...

...in a mini-bedpan.


A ordered the perennial Eggs Benedict.

E's scrambled eggs and bacon and Felicity's "big breakfast" had all the things you'd expect. Decently cooked eggs, sausage extrudings and (I can't understand this) hash browns from a packet. Another puzzle - E's bacon was crisp and decently smokey while F's was damp and flaccid. Pepper had to be requested, and old-skool style, was ground at the table from a space shuttle-sized pepper grinder. Do people steal them?


Everything came with a surfeit of Turkish bread, including my chicken "burger". I'm all for Turkish bread but was surprised to discover there are limits, even to my own breadly desires. The chicken itself was over-grilled, thinly sliced and with a generic asian sweet sauce. The chips were good but the overall impression was of a fish and chip shop hamburger with a little more salad on a big plate. And a bit drier.

I didn't want coffee (which is pretty strange). F said the coffee was recognizable as such. Faint praise indeed.

All in all a pretty underwhelming experience. If I was going out for a relaxed Sunday breakfast quite a few places in Northcote and Thornbury are closer and better. At some point in the future we'll report back on Thornbury favourites Pippa May Cook and Crunch. Next stop, however, will be Bekers.