Melbourne Food Review: Breakfast at Santucci’s, Burwood
I am not a big coffee drinker. Don’t get me wrong, I love coffee but I try not to indulge my coffee habit because I just know that it will get out of hand. The problem is also that I am absolutely dead against disposable coffee cups. There’s one thing I really hate about Melbourne is that their coffee habit is killing the environment. Sure, everyone thinks they look cool with their little disposal coffee cups on the way to work and it’s oh-so-cosmopolitan. No. I am sorry.
No.
Because I rather like coffee a lot, I save it for special occasion. If you have it everyday, it loses its meaning right?
Anyway, one Saturday morning I woke up and thought I really could do with a nice cup of coffee. So I stole Josh’s phone and had a dig around the Urbanspoon app and it recommended Santucci’s. It’s not very far from home and it had a few nice reviews from the coffee drinking crowd so we upped and went.
The dining room was handsomely decorated. Nice wooden and with retro Italian paraphernalia and it was a rather nice space for a cafe. However, for someone who rarely eats breakfast out and spend Saturdays sleeping in, I find it strange to be surrounded by so many people so early on a Saturday. It was full of family brunching out, groups of girlfriends catching up over breakkie, parents, kids, babies. They were all there. Just weird for me. I am a breakfast-out noob.
(Pancake with berry compote and vanilla ice cream – $12)
Josh rarely ever eats fry-up for breakfast. The only time I have ever seen him eating poached eggs were when I made them for dinner despite him making me poached eggs for breakfast quite often. So pancakes are his usual choice. I had a bite and well, they were kinda terrible. The pancakes weren’t cooked through in the middle and there wasn’t enough syrup. Josh didn’t complain though so I guess they weren’t that bad.
(Scrambled eggs with marinated Greek feta on potato rosti, roasted tomato and avocado – $15.50)
I wa s tossing up between their French toast with bananas or their scrambled eggs with marinated Greek feta. Because I am such a savoury girl (or something might say, unsavoury girl), the eggs win out. The eggs always win out.
The eggs were quite heavy with generous mix of feta cheese and the tomato was perfectly roasted. Problem with the whole dish was just that it was too heavy. The potato rosti was nice enough but it, too, was very heavy. The avocado, the only fresh thing on the plate, didn’t help to lighten it. It was also drizzled with a bit of oil and it didn’t really help.
I saw a few other people ordering this dish. It seemed to be their most popular. It was all right. It did fare much better than the pancakes in my opinion but I would have liked it lighter. And this comes from a person who does not believe in light breakfast.
And the coffee? My coffee was full of love. It made everything all right and wonderful again. While I wasn’t too impressed with the food and the whole breakfast out concept, the little cup of bean juice made it all better and right again.
See? I really do like coffee.
Addrress: 1392 Toorak Rd., Burwood* VIC 3146
Phone: 03 9889 6335
This time last year I ate at:Red Spice Road, Melbourne CBD
* If you were to ask me what suburb Santucci’s is in, I would say Burwood. But Santucci’s web site calls it Camberwell and Urbanspoon says Canterbury. I have no idea what’s going on. Mind you the suburb line around here is ridiculous blurry. Even our place some times doesn’t know which suburb it falls under. But I’m going to go ahead and call it Burwood because it is smack bang on the Toorak Rd. strip of shops in Burwood
