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1264 High Street, Armadale, 9509 2325
My score: 4/5
Don’t you love it when breakfast is more than eggs and assemblage, when it’s crafted with thought, skill and quality produce that elevates the meal from first look to last bite? That’s the deal at Forest Green, a cafe with a restaurant ethic expressed in dishes like the duck eggs, fried to a perfect crisp-fringed circle, laid on toast as airily as a line-dried sheet over a wide expanse of mattress, topped with lightly roasted tomatoes, plump green olives, furls of prosciutto, and a heart-fluttery scattering of flowers and baby herbs. It’s pretty and vigorous with a good balance of salt and richness.
Too many cafes let granola fly through to the keeper without so much as a probe outside leg. Forest Green drives it through the covers. Nice shots don’t need to be flashy: this granola is a poised honey-toasted mix of oats, seeds, flaked almonds and coconut, vanilla yoghurt, poached strawberries and rhubarb. It’s as impeccable as the crème brulee donuts are dastardly and delicious.
It makes complete sense that this six-month-old cafe will start opening for dinner this week. Owner and chef Patrick Craig previously helmed Maris, a contemporary oft-hatted restaurant at the southern end of Glenferrie Road. He brought most of his Maris team here including chef Jon Nolan as partner. The experienced fine dining crew now deliver stellar food and invested, keen service in a breezy shopfront setting. Dinner menus will build on satisfying lunch dishes like grilled chicken salad with cracked wheat, sweet roasted carrots and eggplant, and the super satisfying shredded lamb shoulder with orecchiette pasta and crumbly salted ricotta. Otherwise, expect whole fish, barbecue meats, and nibbles to share. Ah, and wine: a tight list of Victorian wines under $55. Forest Green isn’t complicated but it’s an exemplar of simplicity stretching towards the sublime, and a cafe you can count on from morning till night.
See their website.
More Cafes Doing Dinner:
Monk Bodhi Dharma, Rear 202 Carlisle Street, Balaclava, 9534 7250
The space is tiny, the food is healing and the coffee is heart-pumpingly serious. Book in for a 10-course degustation dinner on Friday January 30. It’s not only vegan, it’s also free from gluten, garlic and onion.
Third Wave, 189 Rouse Street, Port Melbourne, 9676 2399
By day it’s a cafe but at night Third Wave morphs into an American barbecue joint with maple-wood-smoked chicken and dry-rubbed pork ribs. The Russian owner oversees blintzes (pancakes) and pelmeni (dumplings) too. Eclectic, hey? Also in Prahran.
Pope Joan, 77-79 Nicholson Streeet, Brunswick East, 9388 8858
It started as a daytime cafe but weeknight dinners are now a badly kept local secret. Snack on fried chicken wings or chickpea chips, crunch on nutty, seedy salads and relax with a bowl of pasta or a bit of meat and veg.
First published in The Age, January 4, 2015.
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