Dear Abbey

Eggs Benedict at Dear Abbey

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23a Gladstone Street, Moonee Ponds, 9372 0093

My score: 3/5

‘Dear Abby’ is a US advice column known since the 1950s for its crisp wit and no-nonsense wisdom. It’s also a tortured John Prine ballad from the 1970s (“Dear Abby, Dear Abby, My fountain pen leaks, My wife hollers at me and my kids are all freaks…”) And, since late 2016, it’s also a magnetically appealing cafe opposite the Moonee Ponds Woolworths carpark.

Dear Abbey’s main dining room is a big glass box bolted onto the front of an 1890s Wesleyan church, which has itself been converted into apartments. In fact, number 4 is for sale and if you like the idea of stained-glass saints watching over your slumber, it might be for you.

The glass box is the first of a series of indoor-outdoor spaces that charmingly abut old and new. There’s a courtyard under the spire, a corridor lined with small dining tables and an ante-room where it’s easy to imagine a severe nun pacing the parquetry floor praying for souls. Now it’s trod by young waiters praying they get this heavy breakfast to table ten without stumbling.

I’m not joking about the weightiness. The modern cafe’s focus on presentation has led to increasingly heavy plates and presentation boards – and sometimes even a hefty plate on a thick plank. If there’s one benefit to all this, it’s that servers have beautifully sculpted arms.

As you’d gather from the heavy plate scenario, the menu is contemporary but Dear Abbey is not desperately trendy and the food is more about well-executed standards, presented with pride. The ricotta hotcakes are fluffy and served with a generous jug of lemon maple butter syrup. The eggs benedict comes with a very good hollandaise made with seeded mustard and just the right acidic kick. A potato roesti stands in for the traditional muffin and the ham element turns out to be jamon tightly wrapped around grilled asparagus. It’s excellent. The Abbey hot plate is a full-brekkie extravaganza that includes black pudding and haloumi. Eat it, climb the spire, no problem.

For lunch, there’s seafood pasta, softshell crab burger and chicken kimchi sub. There’s also a superfood salad with tricolour quinoa, carrots, avocado, shaved radishes and petals. In 2010, this would have been astonishing but it’s a mark of the fast pace of Melbourne menus that it already seems a little dated. It’s tasty and sustaining though.

Dear Abbey’s coffee geekery is denoted by a display cabinet showing off a complicated drip brewer but the young staff don’t do much to push it. The standard espresso is nicely done but I especially love the fact that stovetop espresso is offered.

The builders who constructed the 40-metre Gothic Revival spire under which Dear Abbey buzzes would never have dreamed it, but their landmark now lures the hangry to brunch revival. If Melbourne’s new religion is coffee, then it all makes sense.

See their website.

More Repurposed:

Brighton Schoolhouse, 15 St Andrews Street, Brighton, 9593 3129.
An airy and atmospheric old church schoolroom is an indoor-outdoor cafe with a menu that veers from healthy to who-cares. Key dish: ‘Real Housewives of Brighton Beetroot Salad’.

Glass Merchants, 63-65 Nelson Street, Balaclava, 8528 0118.
Once a glazier’s workshop, now a big, breezy cafe with an industrial feel and appealing booth seating.

Up in Smoke, 28 Hopkins Street, Footscray, 9689 8188.
You’d never guess this smoked meat haven and beer garden used to be a kitchenware shop. Keep ordering simple by sharing a meat tray with pulled pork, brisket and sausage.

The Independent, 79 Main Street, Gembrook, 5968 1110.
Previously a hardware store, now a hard-wearing Argentinean restaurant for long lunches, delicious dinners and functions.

First published in The Age, 2nd April 2017.