Cru: 916 Glenferrie Road, Kew, 9818 4366
My score: 3.5/5
Often I’ll drag myself from bed and house for breakfast and fall back asleep while reading the menu. Breakfast menus tend to be boring because humans are hopelessly habitual regarding morning fuel and there’s no point offering cuttlefish congee when everyone clamours for scrambled eggs. But there is a happy middle path where dishes are sufficiently traditional to be unthreatening but tweaked enough to turn breakfast into a true dining experience.
Cru gets it. Yes, there’s egg, bacon and muesli but this isn’t standard short order cooking. Proper restaurant principles ensure shining dishes such as the oxtail, slow-braised, wrapped in caul fat, crisped and placed on creamy scrambled eggs. A crunchy remoulade niggles at the sticky richness but this is still a sustaining dish that may obviate the need for lunch. There’s fancy method in the 65/65 egg, cooked for 65 minutes at 65 degrees. This geek technique is supposed to result in a wobbly white and runny yolk. The science is solid but, unfortunately, so was my yolk. One strike, but no out, because the dish was still great. The egg is tipped from its shell and perched atop piquant beetroot relish, lip-smacking slices of black pudding and gluten-free bread made from chickpea and potato flour. Presentation is arrestingly lovely, on a glazed plate dotted with herb and floral sprigs.
Cafe fruit salads are rarely thrilling. I shudder to remember collapsed watermelon, mushy canteloupe, grapes with brown holes where the stems used to be, and scant scatterings of glamour fruits such as berries. Now it is time to forget those dead, cold disappointments and eat the Cru fruit instead. Like any good fruit bowl, the contents shift but my blessed offering starred whole poached pear rolled in crunchy toasted quinoa, perfect kiwi and strawberries, and a dollop of date labne. It was pretty, fresh and healthy and made me glowingly grateful that something so beautiful and thoughtful was there just for the asking, and for just $10.
Coffee is taken seriously with the barista applying stern attention to each cup. The room is cute and bright, with a long marble counter and sweet accents in the form of groovy botanical arrangements, tactile glass and crockery, and a plant-lined alley. A liquor license and wine bar is coming for summer. Cru gets crowded at brunch peak hour but this Kew queue is worth it.
See their website.
More non-boring breakfasts:
Pope Joan, 77-79 Nicholson Street, Brunswick East, 9388 8858
The best Brunswick wake-up alarm isn’t a rude beep-beep-beep, it’s a recitation of this breakfast menu which includes gingerbread with smoked maple butter.
Circa, 2 Acland Street, St Kilda, 9536 1122
Circa is resurrecting the hotel breakfast, one pork belly, fried egg and Vietnamese herb baguette at a time. The Bloody Mary does its bit too.
Cumulus Inc, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, 9650 1445
The cafe where many Melburnians tried their first 65/65 egg is still turning out perfect specimens. Freshly baked madeleines get city mornings off to a flying start.
First published in The Age, November 4, 2012
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