pet peeves - breakfast

I caught a little of Cam Smith waxing lyrical about breakfasts yesterday on “Eat It” on 3RRRFM. Being on the road I had to restrain myself from phoning in to add to the list of pet peeves about breakfast dining. But it got me thinking…

The Food Nazi’s top 10 breakfast peeves

1. Waiting. I don’t mind being turned away at the door if a café/restaurant is full but I do mind sitting ignored at a table or waiting forever to place or receive an order in an establishment that has more seats than it’s floor or kitchen staff can handle. Though I’d pass in some circles as a morning person, not everyone is at their best til they’ve had their first shot of caffeine or got their blood sugar levels up. Twenty minutes twiddling your thumbs, waiting to give or get an order is way too long.

2. Shit coffee. This is Melbourne – stale beans, burnt coffee or weak espresso just doesn’t make the grade.

3. Frozen bricks pretending to be hash browns. These greasy pieces of crap might be acceptable at the golden arches but we expect better than a drive-through when we eat out.

4. Fried dollops of leftover mashed potato pretending to be hash browns. Slightly less greasy than the maccas variety they tend to be sloppy and dairy ridden. Call them something else and serve them but they aint hash browns either.

5. Non-disclosure of meat in a vegetarian breakfast. Enough said. *shudders*

6. Minimalist servings. This is breakfast. We’re eating out. If we wanted 1 piece of toast and a single mushroom, we’d have stayed at home.

7. Imperfect avocado. Brown, stringy, over-ripe or plain bad fruit and vegetables should not be part of any dining experience, regardless of the time of day.

8. Poached eggs that are too raw, over cooked or dripping with water and make your toast go soggy. If my father can learn to poach a half-decent egg at the age of 82, you’d think a cook could do it right each time.

9. And while we are on the subject of eggs, in this country the term “free range” doesn’t really mean anything at the best of times. If you want to justify charging patrons more for their eggs invest in organic.

10. Supermarket bread, boring menus, tinned baked beans…

I could go on all day but I’d prefer to know what your breakfast peeves are.

Crisis what crisis?

I am an oddity in the Melbourne food blogging community. I rarely do high end, big name dining and I have what some would consider an abnormal penchant for beancurd. But after a frantic couple of weeks of eating out - all I want for dinner is tofu and vegetables, at home on a Saturday night.

The SE’s mother and uncle were in town recently from Sydney. As we trailed from breakfast to lunch to dinner in what felt like an endless haze of eating (and occasionally drinking) they’d keep saying “There’s no recession here!” followed by, “Do people do anything else in Melbourne other than eating?”.

While Sydney has its share of noteworthy restaurants, I’ve always found it hard to find mid-range, good value dinning in that town. A taxi driver once said that in Sydney people eat out less frequently but spend more. Perhaps that explains it, in Melbourne we want to eat out often but demand a decent bang for our buck whether it is a work night dinner at the local, or a Big Night.

A piece this week in The Age muses on the conundrum , why are so many of Melbourne’s restaurants booked out at a time when 80% of Australians say they are eating out less? The other weekend we slipped into Bistro Flor at 6.30, early on a Sunday evening. Fortunately we had a booking for even at this hour the place had few spare tables and was certainly at full capacity within a short time of arriving. Everyone appeared to be enjoying a slow meander through the menu. The staff were helpful, without being pushy. We worked our way through 3 delicious courses, a bottle of excellent wine plus a few extra reds by the glass, all for little over $60 a head. This is fine yet unfussy dinning in the shadow of a recession, making its patrons very happy indeed.

We had a weekend late lunch at a packed out Cookie. Prowled Rathdowne Street to find a Sunday brunch, resorting to a third choice of café after finding the first two full up. I snuck a midweek catch up with a friend at Movida Next Door to grab the last pair of barstools at 5.45 pm, watching all the hopefuls arriving after us being turned away. At an old favourite, De Los Santos, they were still taking walk ins on a Saturday night but the place was close to capacity, with a good turn over of tables. I enjoyed one of my best meals there ever, with a great batch of specials, two to three courses each plus alcohol for around $50 a head.

On the other side, I fortunately missed a cheap but decidedly not cheerful meal at an Italian chain pronounced the “worst pasta ever” by all three (you think we would have ended up eating there if I’d been around?). As for our local stand by, The Kent Hotel, our long serving waitress seemed unusually frazzled, mentioning the amount of complaints she’d been receiving from regulars as budgets got tightened. The food that had previously ranged from good to very good - was spectacularly unexciting. Not bad exactly, just didn’t compare favourably with all the other similarly priced meals of the week. In its current incarnation I think it would still stand out as a great neighbourhood eatery in most Sydney suburbs but Melbournians are decidedly fussier.

I have vague memories of big name Melbourne restaurants that I could never afford to eat in, closing in the early nineties. For someone on my budget it was a strangely positive turn of events, heralding a new era in better quality, mid-range dining. I suspect as prices and expectations have risen in the recent boom, a little pruning may not be a bad thing. Awful for the industry, yes, I’m sorry if my words sound flippant. But for the punters, it just ups the ante.

And as for the cheap eats – couldn’t get a table at The Abyssinian on the weekend, so its not just Cutler & Co or Movida as The Age had implied. Good food that is priced appropriately will continue to thrive in Melbourne but those whose food, staff or prices don’t meet expectations (or I’m guessing most of the restaurants at Crown), its going to be tough.

In the meantime, simple home cooking will never go out of style. The more great food I eat out, the greater I crave “clean food” – steamed vegetables, legumes and brown rice.

More recipes here soon - I promise!