Montague Park: 406 Park Street (corner Montague Street), South Melbourne, 9682 9680
My score: 4/5
It’s only breakfast but when it’s good it’s a marvellous morning meditation, enabling the partaker to greet life with energy, optimism and cheer. Montague Park serves some of Melbourne’s most buoyant breakfasts (and lovely lunches) to lucky locals, most of them regulars who visit this long-established cafe daily. The bright corner spot isn’t big but comfortable indoor seating is augmented by a huge pavement apron where dogs wag tails and humans wag tongues.
Owners Andrew and Katherine Lockyear are Rockpool alumni. He’s a chef who moved from Sydney to open the Crown grill; she was the floor manager. When a baby came along they ditched the night-time grind but kept the high-end rigor and passion. That’s partly expressed by being there: their toddler son must know the cafe as well as his own bedroom. Proper restaurant activities include baking their own bread (available around noon) and whole-beast butchery: a lamb or pig (and occasionally goat) is broken down each week for grills, roasts (roast lamb sandwiches!) and meatballs and ragus to go with housemade pasta. There are also delicious sausages which some customers take home by the kilo. I lucked onto a coarse pork and fennel sausage with my breakfast, glistening with just enough fat to make it juicy but lean enough to taste distinctly meaty.
Montague Park customers must know that simplicity is a path to joy because squashed tomatoes are the most popular breakfast dish. Juicy, squishy, hot tomatoes are tickled with chilli, bedded on white toast, and topped with basil and poached egg. There’s not much to it, really, but it’s really, really right. A subcontinental skew can be attributed to a Sri Lankan component in Katherine’s family and to Nepali staff. At breakfast, it’s wonderfully expressed in a dish of small, dark Nepalese chickpeas with deeply caramelised curried red onions. A fried egg lolls on top, ready to be yolkily spilled and tumbled. My goodness, it’s good.
Breakfast energy can’t always be wholesome so it’s lucky the coffee here is capable of ungluing night-crumpled faces. Best of all, the Lockyears are planning on sticking around for years. ‘Fine dining is great and the tips are great but you don’t get that same feedback,’ says Katherine Lockyear. ‘We get customers coming in twice a day and the praise we get is nuts. The compliments keep us inspired.’ That inspiration is fed back into food that’s honest and heartfelt: bring on the day.
First published in The Age, January 23, 2011
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