Gingerlee, East Brunsiwck

Sunday morning Michael & I took Chloe for an early morning walk to check out Gingerlee, a new café on Lygon street in East Brunswick. The breakfast menu had a few items on it with quite a Middle Eastern feel, it was quite interesting offering dishes from toasted apricot & walnut bread, poached eggs with slow braised field mushrooms, Persian feta, avocado & lemon to the home made baked bean tagine that Michael had & the Syrian style French toast, orange blossom syrup, honey labne, stewed rhubarb & pistachios that I ordered. Mine was sensational, I could have eaten 2 plates full, the toast on first impressions could have been too sweet but as soon as you team it with the yoghurt it was perfect, as I said, absolutely luscious & nice to have something different to the usual suspects that appear on most breakfast menus. Michael enjoyed his beans though not as much as I did my dish, he said there was a flavour in there (couldn’t name it) that didn’t quite sit right with him, it did look good though especially when they brought it out in the tagine, lid & all before uncovering at the table. All in all another great addition to this strip. Also I would like to note that on the way home I stopped at Sugardough for some bread & noticed they now sell bomboloni too, custard, jam, apricot jam & chocolate flavoured & I’ pleased to say that after tasting the custard filled variety it is even better than Dench’s – in my opinion only of course – I love this bakery.

Gingerlee
Ph: +613 9380 4430
Fax: +613 9380 4436
117 Lygon Street
East Brunswick
Email: rebeccadietrich@gingerlee.com.au
www.gingerlee.com.au

Dench Bakers, North Fitzroy

It was such a gorgeous day yesterday that Michael & I ventured out for a walk along the Merri Creek path & emerged on St Georges road for a quick lunch with Chloe at Dench Bakers in North Fitzroy. This is a great bakery that also operates as a café which we hadn’t yet tried out. I have been inside before to purchase the brioche for my Apple Charlotte & I have tried the amazing bomboloni (sensational sugar coated, custard filled doughnut) as pointed out by a couple of local bloggers, Jamie at The Breakfast Blog & Niki at Esurientes, so I was really looking forward to having lunch here.

The place was rocking & of course there were no free tables though there were a couple of stools set up on the side walk so we sat down, had a coffee & waited our turn. A table was free in a few minutes which was great so we happily moved in. The menu was smallish but diverse with various breakfast options both hot & cold, sandwiches, paninis & a great specials board. We both went for the specials, Michael had the zucchini flower & pumpkin risotto which was great while I couldn’t go past the ricotta hotcakes with baked autumn plums even though it was lunch at 1.30 in the afternoon. My dish was sensational, the hotcakes were delicious & the simply baked plums were juicy & sweet & didn’t make the hotcakes go soggy at all which is always a good thing, and look at how huge the serve was! Anyway I love this place & it comes highly recommended, and as Jamie says, as well as eating your brekky or lunch or whatever you will end up walking out the door with a bag of goodies too, the baked goods on offer look too good not to bring some home for later.

Dench Bakers, Atrisan Sourdoughs
109 Scotchmer Street
North Fitzroy VIC 3068
Ph: 03 9486 3554
denchbakers@optusnet.com.au