Friday 3 February 2012

Sowing the Seeds & Breaking the Fast

(degusted November and December, 2011)


Seed Café, Mordialloc

Our first restaurant post for 2012, and we’re ashamed to admit it, but we have judged this book by it’s cover for many years. Seed café is nicely located half-way between Nepean Highway and the beach, in the middle of Mordialloc. We’ve posted previously about Main St Café (which is less than 200 metres away from Seed), and have enjoyed the breakfasts and coffees at Main St. Recently though, we’ve found Main St to be quite “busy” and thought it was high time we tried somewhere else in this lovely town for breakfast.

Across the street from the Woolies carpark, Seed Café’s façade is not exactly awe-inspiring. It’s a fairly plain-looking shopfront – clean and neat for sure – but to us it lacks the “wow” factor and almost gets lost in the streetscape. There's no tables & chairs on the footpath, so it is very hard to tell if the place is busy. From the street, Seed always seemed to look empty, and we mistakenly took that as a sign the locals were already voting with their feet and going elsewhere. How wrong we were.

Walking through the front doors, we realised why the front looks so quiet. The back half is where the action is at, opening out into a nice decked alfresco area. It was bright, open, airy, homely, and a little peaceful haven, all in one – and this was something we felt was missing in our visits to other local cafés.

We’ve visited Seed on two recent occasions, so the descriptions below are over two days (we didn’t eat it all at once!).

First up were the portugese eggs (poached eggs, with chorizo, served on a toasted bagel – I had a side of smoked salmon also).  This was remarkably tasty – as you’d expect with the chorizo – but there’s also some red onion, which gives even more flavour.
The other dish sampled was a customised plate-up, with the ‘eggs on toast’ and sides of field mushroom and home-made hash brown. The mushroom was huge, and nice and ‘meaty’. The hash-brown was a nice thick morsel – good enough to make us order more on our next visit (see below).
Potugese Eggs, with side of smoked salmon
 
poached eggs, sides of field mushroom and hashbrown

On the return visit, we were looking for a lighter, sweeter brunch. We found this in the French toast (delicious, and lovingly covered in slivered almonds, and a side of mixed berries) and in the Organic flour pancakes with poached pears and ice-cream. Both were lapped up eagerly. Both were soft and fluffy – and oh-so-moreish. I did mention that we got a couple of the home-made hash browns again on the second visit, and they were equally good – if not better – this time around. The best way we could describe them is to say they are bordering on being a flattened ball of yummy mashed potato that had been fried off to a crisp and tasty finish. A great little savoury to offset the sweet (and miles above similar thin, pre-frozen and greasy offerings at some other places).
French Toash - we loved the slivered almonds

Fresh home-made pancakes.

Some of the yummiest hash-browns we've ever had at brunch.
 
The caffeine-fiend deguster went for a couple of espressos, which were good enough, and consistent both within and between visits. The other deguster opted for soy milk mochas, and these were REALLY good. So good in fact that the espresso drinker had to order one for himself.

Summary:
The food was good, fresh, clean. The service was friendly and relaxed (compare to Main St café which seems to be frantic and buzzing constantly). The atmosphere was nice and relaxing, and the space was good – enough space to fit a stroller, and there’s little risk of knocking elbows with the folk at the adjacent table. We like it.  For a relaxing brunch in Mordialloc, this is currently our pick.


Points of note:
-Eggs are all free range.
-The menu might change with seasonal availability of items, but you can check it here:
-Gluten free options are available
-Vegetarians should be OK here (but we’re unsure about how well a Vegan request would be handled).
-Kid-friendly – there’s a children’s menu, and room to park a pram next to your table.
-There’s a party/function room available
-Serving Breakfast & Lunch



Rating:  Nom(x2) - will be back.
Meh                      It’ll Do                   Nom(x3)                              Must go back!
 
Done and Degusted @ Seed Cafe, Mordialloc

-Portugese Eggs
-Eggs on Toast
-Sides of smoked salmon, field mushrooms, and hash-browns
-French toast
-Pancakes
-Short black / espresso
-Mocha's



Seed Cafe on Urbanspoon

1 comment:

  1. Hi,

    Just wanted to let you know about our newish restaurant / café that we opened in Prahran. It is a sister café to a fairly established Port Melbourne venue. Prahran has great daytime café fare with a few extras.

    We specialise in the REAL American BBQ – from Maple smoked Pork Ribs to 10 hour Hickory smoked and Dry Rubbed Beef Brisket. Our American BBQ menu was around long before the current craze. In addition we have a dedicated Paleo menu, which is extremely rare in Melbourne.
    Our chef is a protege of Iron Chef Sakai. He ran 2 of Chef Sakai's restaurants in Japan.

    We would love to invite you to try out the café. If interested please let me know if you would like to come for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Invitation is for your and a friend.

    Thanks for your consideration.

    Best regards,

    Greg

    www.thirdwavecafe.com.au

    ReplyDelete