Snow Pony, White Horse Rd., Balwyn { Melbourne Review }
‘How do you like your eggs in the morning? I like mine with a kiss.’
Strangely enough, Snow Pony’s website is the only website whose neverending autoplay music doesn’t piss me off. It’s such a great tune to get you in the mood to visit this awesome little cafe in Balwyn (or as their official address Deepene – seriously does anyone know what Deepene is?) for their brunch.
(Snow Pony Winter 2011 menu)
Because I am your regular Eastern suburb stay-at-home Mum, I find it really hard to battle into the inner suburbs for the awesome cafes frequented by the hip young crowd during brunch hours with a young baby, especially on the weekends. Snow Pony is the perfect answer. It’s not too far from home and I can always get parking just out front.
(Mini Me and her grandmother)
Snow Pony, whose name I can only guess has something to do with the fact that it’s situated on White Horse Road, is brought to you by the same folks who bring you Friends of Mine in Richmond and Porgie and Mr Jones in Hawthorn. They have similar menu with the similar flair in their food. But Snow Pony’s staff has been absolutely outstanding at accommodating Mini Me and just all around very very lovely. And they have been very consistent about it in all the visits we made.
(Giddy Up – Snow Pony’s big breakfast – $18.90)
On this particular occasion, I took Mini Me and her grandma out for a lunch treat. We both decided to share a couple of dishes. Lyn had opted for Giddy Up, which is Snow Pony’s version of big breakfast. It consisted of two poached eggs, bacon, roasted tomato, smashed avocadoes and herby mushrooms. There is nothing imperfect about this dish. The eggs were perfectly poached with the white just set and the yolks rich and runny. The bacon was smokey and crispy. The mushrooms were flavourful. Right down to the Noisette thick cut toast which Mini Me happily munched on (and absolutely refused to touch supermarket white bread for days after that).
(French lentil salad – $18?)
We also ordered the French lentil salad with rocket, walnut and goat’s cheese. It was a lovely salad – everything was perfectly dressed and the flavours were well balanced. Unfortunately, it was tiny and I was starving. So it wasn’t something I would order again (because let’s face it, I’m always starving.)
(Toasted banana bread with maple syrup mascarpone, fresh banana, berry compote & crushed pistachio – $14.9)
So to make up for the small lunch, I decided that I would have their lemonade scones with jam and cream which I have had a few times and are all kinds of awesome except they weren’t available*. So instead, we settled on sharing one of their very popular breakfast dish: toasted banana bread.
How supremely pretty is this dish? Thick chunks of toasted banana bread with generous amount of mascarpone, banana and berry filling drenched in syrup and berry coulis topped with green pistachio. It is such a good looking dish. And very satisfying. It was basically the opposite of the light lentil salad I had earlier but still with all the prettiness.
You can probably tell by the gushing that I will be there. Often. Please don’t stalk me.
Snow Pony
Address: 95 White Horse Rd., Balwyn VIC 3026
Phone: 03 9816 8911
* to this I had to send off a terse email complaining about the lack of ‘sconage’ (because it wasn’t the first time it had happened – they ran out of scones quite often from my experience) and received a promise that scone numbers will now be doubled in all of their cafes. Yay.
