Brunch At Caffe Cortilé

I'd been looking forward to the Queen's Birthday, practically as if it were my very own. The last Monday I had off from school was Easter Monday and I agreed to go into work that day. This time I declined and started the day off with a lovely brunch in the city with Will, our couple friends and another couple that we have recently added to our list of "people we can do social things with". I had planned on checking out Pushka, but being that it was a proper holiday and all, this little mystery will be kept a mystery until further notices because it was closed. Instead, we headed over to my backup -- Caffe Cortilé-- which turned out to be one of the couple's favourite brunch spots.

Caffe Cortilé is snuggled between other cafes on Place Place in the Block Arcade off Little Collins. The place was packed when we walked in, but surprisingly enough when we told the waitress that we were a party of six she led us to the back where there just happened to be an open table for six. As soon as we sat down we were given two carafes of water to sip on while we browsed the menu. Everyone seemed to have ordered more or less the same thing: 3 soy chai lattes for the vegetarians and 3 lattes for the non-vegos and 4 vegetarian breakfasts, 1 eggs Benedict and eggs Florentine sans the hollandaise.

The soy chai latte came with a rather nice layer of foam. It didn't taste like powder, but I couldn't be sure they didn't take the syrup route like Gloria Jeans and Starbucks. It was one tasty chai, though. The vegetarian meal was different that the Melbourne standard, which usually tends to have mushrooms, a poached egg, spinach, avocado and a potato cooked in one form or another. Cortilé's vego breakfast came nicely presented and showed some imagination on the kitchen's behalf. Half of an avocado stuffed with feta and lashings of a sweet tomato relish came on bed of "seared" spinach (read: practically raw) perched on mixed seed toast.

Since I work in a kitchen myself and hate it when people make changes to dishes on the menu to suit their own tastes, I hesitated to ask them to hold the mushrooms and replace it with spinach. But I did and they complied with my request. I think mushrooms are an overused vegetable in vegetarian dishes and I don't like them, so I just HAD to ask them to replace them.

Personally, I think the vegetarian dish could have used an egg or beans or cheese to add some protein the dish. It was quite fatty, although tasty, with cheese stuffed avocado. Either way, the saltiness of the fetta cheese, the sweetness of the relish and the buttery fruity blandness of the avocado went quite well together.

The atmosphere is conducive to having good conversations, they have a great selection of sweets and the inside is chic and trendy. My biggest complaint? The service was really, really slow. But, apparently the food always takes a long time to arrive according to our couple friend who goes there for brunch often. I probably won't be going back on a regular basis simply because they don't have Eggs Florentine on the menu, they serve their spinach raw instead of sauteed and the only vegetable in the vegetarian breakfast is mushrooms -- I nearly hate mushrooms. I do give them extra points for the creative vegetarian option though.

Caffé Cortilé
30 Block Place
Melbourne (CBD), Victoria