Exploring Brunswick (East)

This post is an overdue hangover from my recent Amnesty Fortnight. I've been to a few places in Brunswick/Brunswick East recently, so here they all are...



Sugardough Panificio and Patisserie
163 Lygon Street, Brunswick East (map)
9380 4060


It was a Saturday morning and Mum and Dad swung past to pick me up so we could all go market shopping together (aw!). A few minutes into the journey it dawned on me: "Hey wait, we're heading north! But I was going to see if there was any sel de fleur at The Essential Ingredient for the salted caramel and chocolate ganache tart I'm attempting tomorrow!"

Aha, but we weren't going to Prahran Market, they informed me. We were going to the Queen Vic, but first they wanted to take me to an undisclosed location for brunch. The location turned out to be Sugardough Panificio and Patisserie, a place Mum recently discovered by following her nose (literally - the smell of freshly baked pastries was hypnotic).


As the name suggests, it's a bakery that embraces both Italian and French style breads and pastries. As well as being a bustling cafe, there was a near-constant queue of people wanting to buy bread - loved the look of these baguettes in their little wooden bin.


Dad and I shared a bacon and egg panino, which featured excellent bread (natch), tasty relish and the yellowed yolks I've seen in ages.


Mum ordered a bombolone, filled with crema pasticcera. It was very good, one of the best I've tasted in Australia.


They also sell proper cornetti! The Italian cousin to the croissant, the cornetto is sweeter, less buttery/flaky, and more likely to be filled with crema or marmellata than dark chocolate (see an excellent article on croissants vs cornetti here). They're brilliant. They taste just like Italy. :)


Wicked of us I know, but we also bought a slice of this delectable-looking sweetened ricotta and nutella crostata, to take away and eat later that afternoon. It was bloody lovely.




Robbie's Stein
99 Sydney Road, Brunswick (map)
9388 9817

The following weekend I was back in Brunswick, helping CD inspect rental terraces. We walked through the open door into the first place, only to come across a gentleman sitting on the floor, fixing a drawer with a screwdriver. We greeted him somewhat uncertainly, asking where the real estate agent was. He politely informed us that he was the new tenant, and had been living there for the last three weeks.

"Oh. ... OH. So we're standing in your hallway then. I suppose we'd better go. Terribly sorry." I dithered, à la Hugh Grant. (Actually, if my life WERE a Hugh Grant movie, accidentally trespassing into a guy's house would have been a great/awful romantic comedy premise.)

We had lunch at Robbie's Stein to recover.


As well as being a restaurant and wine bar, Robbie's Stein is a fish and chippery. It's one of CD's favourite places, so she wanted to show it to me. I loved the interior, especially the gorgeous pressed ceilings.


CD ordered bacon and eggs but I wanted something fishy. I ordered and enjoyed the fresh and tasty lemongrass and coriander fish baguette with cucumber, lettuce, tomato and spicy peanut sauce ($15).



Mr Wilkinson
295 Lygon Street, East Brunswick (map)
9388 8578


From my selfish perspective the best thing about CD moving to Brunswick is that I'll have a close friend living there, so plenty of excuses to explore the surrounding bars and restaurants! Hopefully she'll be living close enough to Mr Wilkinson for it to be her local...


Mr Wilkinson is an effortlessly fabulous wine bar on Lygon Street. It's named after Thomas Wilkinson, the man who founded the suburb of Brunswick over 150 years ago. I found out about the bar from the lovely Lucy from The Design Files, whose partner is one of the owners. I dropped in there for a pre-Hellenic Republic glass of wine one Sunday evening and was suitably impressed. Beautiful but unaffected.


I just love the look of the place, particularly the use of lighting and natural light, and our table made from a repurposed wooden shutter door. As well as a carefully thought out wine, beers and booze list, a couple of snacks (olives and light tapas) are on the menu. As I said, we only had time to glug one glass of wine before our dinner reservation - but I look forward to returning sometime soon.



Hellenic Republic
434 Lygon Street, Brunswick East (map)
9381 1222


For my birthday this year my zia P and her partner M, both fans of the blog, informed me that their birthday present would be buying Melbourne Gastronome dinner at the yet-to-be-visited venue of her choice! (I ask you, is there any better present for a food blogger??) :)

My venue of choice was Hellenic Republic (based chiefly on how amazing the kefalograviera saganki looked on Where's the Beef)!


A contrast to Calombaris' slick CBD Press Club, Hellenic Republic is all friendly, rustic white-washed walls and blue-and-white decor. An Evil Eye on the wall kept close surveillance on us as we ate our meal.

Even though everyone had told us not to, warning that there'd be way too much food, zia P and M insisted we order one of the Trapezi banquets, so that we'd get the full treatment. We ordered the Trapezi Beta, at $59.50 per head.


This is the kefalograviera saganaki, sinfully fried with sweet peppered figs. It tasted even better than it looks, if that's even possible. Olives and toursi (pickled vegetables) in the background.


The grilled kalamari was beautifully simple, and simply beautiful.


The taramosalata ($10) wasn't part of the set menu, but we ordered it as well because we'd heard good things. Somewhat unusually, it was made from white roe (pictured on the left, next to the dolmathakia and Greek salad). I'm really glad we ordered it: the taramosalata was my second-favourite item after the saganaki.


For mains, we had silverbeet, spanakopita and a seafood youvetsi (stew) not on the regular menu, and some lamb on the spit served with chips. The lamb was delicious but by the time it arrived we were all getting horribly full...


As well as a fruit platter, dessert consisted of a bowl of loukoumades donuts and a risogalo (rice pudding), then a piece of walnut cake (complete with birthday candle!).


A big GRAZIE to zia P and M for taking me out for a belated birthday dinner! xx

Surprisingly meh breakfast at A Minor Place

A Minor Place
103 Albion Street, Brunswick (map)
9384 3131


Just before Christmas, Schatzi and I were complaining to each other that we hadn't had a long chat one-on-one in weeks. We decided on a secret brunch, in a place neither of us had been to before. As she lives in North Carlton, I decided to choose somewhere Northside, and looked back through my Google Reader account for posts I had tagged. One venue that Michael and Cindy, Johanna, Fi and Jamie had all written favourable reviews of was A Minor Place, up in Brunswick. I suggested it to Schatzi - when she saw the pretty pictures from Breakfast Out she was sold!


A former milk bar in Albion Street, A Minor Place has blossomed into a hip cafe (Breakfast Out's photos and Johanna's words had warned us in advance that we may come across hipsters tapping away on MacBooks... and sure enough, a girl with chunky framed glasses, a severe bob haircut and a vintage blouse was tapping away on a MacBook directly across from us... I didn't take a photo of her but I'm sure you can picture her!).


So why the "meh", you may ask? Well, apart from one notable exception, everything we had was surprisingly disappointing.

Schatzi ordered the Brazilian Eggs ($15): poached eggs on toast with avocado, roast tomato, Henry's beans and spinach. I ordered the A Minor Place breakfast ($15), which was the same thing except that the avocado was replaced with grilled ham. We're not fussy eaters, but the both dishes just felt kinda... average. Watery eggs and tomatoes, bland bread. The one notable exception was Henry's beans, which were delicious. They can be ordered separately for $10 - with garlic and rosemary, served with rocket dukkah and toast.

No doubt we would've been happier had we just ordered Henry's beans, or if we'd gone for the French toast ($10, with poached pears, honey lemon labne, roasted walnuts and pure maple - nobody appears to have a photo of it on their blog but Miss Hipster ordered some and it looked fantastic).



I wanted to like A Minor Place, and was prepared to write it down to poor menu choices on our part, but then we ordered a slice of the banana and chocolate bread to share and it arrived smeared with a horribly salty margarine, which was really unpleasant combined with the icing sugar and sweet bread (I prefer my choc banana bread any day!).


When Schatzi's coffee came out burnt, that decided things for us - we won't be back in a hurry. We appear to be alone in our assessment! Their dumplings/tapas dinner menu looks interesting though - perhaps we'll head back to check it out at some future stage.

Grand Final day - brunch at Tom Phat

Tom Phat
184 Sydney Road, Brunswick (map)
9381 2374

On Saturday I squeezed in a brunch at Tom Phat, in between an early morning Grand Final champagne breakfast at S's place (where we watched the DVD of the 1989 VFL Grand Final: "GASP as Ablett gets tackled by his brother-in-law and kicks nine awesome goals on a losing side, Johnny 'The Rat' Platten gets concussed and Dipper plays three quarters with a punctured lung! LAUGH at the tight tight short shorts and mullets! THRILL to the sight of Dermie spewing after being run through by Yeates at the opening bounce, then going on to kick three goals despite broken ribs and internal bleeding!") and then the 2008 big game in the afternoon, which was of course brilliant. :-)

Brunch was wonderfully relaxed. O had just returned from ten days in Sardinia, and was looking outrageously tanned in a crisp white shirt. We all started with lovely freshly squeezed juices. I'd heard plenty of good things about Tom Phat (particularly their breakfasts), but previously had only ever been in there for coffee and cake. I love the way the interior design mixes polished concrete surfaces and industrial light fittings with languid Graham Greenesque ceiling fans and bamboo ceilings.

Schatz had the sweet corn fritters with poached egg, smoked salmon, capers, rocket and crème fraîche ($13.90). She gave me a taste - they were delicious, right up there with the ones I love so much at Mart 130. The capers were an especially nice touch.


A had the big breakfast: poached eggs, crispy bacon, roasted tomatoes, grilled mushrooms, avocado, minus the hollandaise but plus hash browns ($14.90 + $3). He reported back to us very favourably, noting it was nice to order crispy bacon that actually comes out crispy.


As for me, I wanted to try one of the several breakfast dishes at Tom Phat that had a tropical Asian spin on them. I was tempted by the Sri scrambled eggs (with spring onion, curry leaves and cherry tomatoes and crispy roti), the Viet eggs fried (with chilli soy and spring onion) and even Uncle Ho's breakfast (grilled marinated pork chop, crispy fried egg, tomato, cucumber and rice).

But in the end both O and I selected the clay pot baked eggs, with roasted tomato, caramelised onion and sweet tamarind minced pork and served with a hunk of crusty bread ($11.90). I loved it - the tang of the tamarind gave the dish a real lift, and matched the acidity of the tomato and the sweetness of the onion beautifully. I know the photo doesn't make the dish look especially appetising, but in this case looks are most certainly deceiving!


When I got to work today and told C about the brunch, she practically smacked me for not trying her favourite dish at Tom Phat: the roti omelette (wok-tossed with bacon, chives and roasted tomato salsa). She orders it fortnightly!