Patterns Cafe

254 Swanston Street, Melbourne VIC
Date visited: 17th January 2012

MerlinFan and I came out this morning for the first brekkie we've had in a fortnight.  Yes, the reason being the new addition to our family (refer to my Digression post).

MerlinFan wanted to try this place called Patterns Cafe along Swanston Street.  Forgive my ignorance - I don't how long this place has been here, but I would have thought I would have noticed it sooner living in the city - but do keep in mind we usually walk on the other side of the street!  

The interior decor of this cafe is really nice - dark walls and a black feature wall in the back, with warm lighting.  I love wooden furniture, and I especially like the "bar" design and the tall stools out front.  Each table was also delicately adorned with a tiny bouquet of purple flowers with the condiments, which I found to be a very nice touch.

One page of the menu booklet

I heard that they do a good coffee here, however as I looked at the beverage page, I saw something called Strawberries and Cream tea, which you could have hot or cold.  There was a picture of a pot of tea with some strawberries served on the side.  Usually I don't order tea outside (because hey, I can make my own at home and it'll taste just the same right?) but I was intrigued.  Deviating from my usual order of latte/mocha, I decided to go with the strawberries and cream tea.

Strawberries and cream tea

Hmm.  Where was the strawberries in the small side pot that was shown in the menu picture?  I had to admit I felt a bit disappointed.  The strawberry tea tasted like it should be, strawberry tea, very gentle and fragrant, however it didn't taste remarkably different from the fruit teas that I could get from the supermarket.  Later I opened the top of the teapot to find little bits of fruit inside that they used for the brew.  

It was a scorcher of a day, so MerlinFan had an iced coffee.

Iced coffee

This was quite a nice iced coffee.  The whipped cream, chocolate sauce and ice cream tasted to me like the sweet cakes and desserts you can get from Asian bakeries.  =D  The coffee itself was very nice - like a cool, creamy latte.  

I decided to go with the Big Breakfast today.  You can choose how you want your free range eggs and what sort of bread you like - I opted for poached eggs and sourdough bread.  The Big Breakfast is big, all right - enough for two with two poached eggs, two triangles of bread and two pork sausages along with half a grilled Roma tomato, mushrooms and bacon.  

The eggs I can report were perfectly poached, nice and runny down the middle.  I think I heard the chef say they ran out of bacon, so our dish came with ham instead.  Not the tastiest ham or sausages I've ever had, but they were okay.  The sourdough bread felt just like regular sandwich toast  @_@  The standout of this dish would definitely be the mushrooms with herb - they really brought out the flavours of the mushrooms beautifully.  And I'm usually not a big fan of tomatoes, but the grilled Roma with the cracked pepper on top was very nice.

Aussie Big Breakfast $11.90

MerlinFan had to try the French Toast.  Now this is no ordinary french toast - for one, it was cube french toast.  Yup, you heard me right - the french toast came in cute little cubes; the appearance reminded me a lot of fried tofu!

French Cube Toast $7.90

The French Cube Toast is REALLY good!  I don't LOVE French Toast, but I really, really enjoyed this dish.  Perhaps because the cubes were small, they were really crispy, not a tad bit soggy and had a strong flavour of cinnamon - they tasted almost like cinnamon doughnuts, only they were toast!  LOL.  They went so well with the maple syrup, vanilla ice cream and the tangy mixed berry compote.

Overall, another great find - somewhere to try for breakfast.  There was a also a display of interesting looking cakes and macaroons at the counter, but we were too full to have dessert.

I would come here again for the French Toast, or to try lunch... only next time I will stick to my guns and order coffee instead.