Snow Pony

Greetings, y'all! Yes, we are back on the blogging block, and I certainly hope we are here to stay for a while longer. Lots has been happening since we last updated, but as MM had said, we never stopped eating (obviously) and am still always on the lookout for good food!

Brunchy times has become sort of a staple for girly get-togethers and catch-ups for us (as we have graduated from student girls to working girls (mostly), brunches are especially awesome for weekends), and lately I find our food adventures centering around the eggs, hams, bacons and COFFEE (as any self-respecting Melbournian, I am a complete addict).

Brunchy Pony Times!

MM has ventured to Snow Pony a couple of times with her uni-mates, and when we found out that it was one of the very few cafes opened on Easter Monday, we decided to swing by and hang out there. Snow Pony is a popular brunch spot that doesn't take reservations (because they clearly don't need to - hopping busy all the time), we had to wait about 20 minutes before snagging a table out in their little covered courtyard. It was a GORGEOUS day so the spot we had was really awesomesauce.

Snow Pony classic: Giddy Up, with scrambled eggs on the top and fried eggs on the bottom

MM and San opted for one of the menu favourites: Giddy Up (isn't the name just nauseatingly cute) with bacon, slow-roasted tomatoes, smashed avocado and thyme-buttered mushrooms. Sis opted for scrambled eggs and San opted for fried eggs. Sis loves the food (hence we are back there on her recommendation) and was overall very happy with her brunch plate. She especially heart the thyme mushrooms, which is a special for Snow Pony and its sister cafe in Hawthorn.

San's comments, specifically, were "full and happy" - so I guess we can make a deduction that she is one satisfied diner! :P But if I remember her comments as we were eating, she thought the roasted tomato was yums to the max. She also liked the avocado - in which I stole some off Sis' plate since she wasn't a fan of the veg in general. I like their avocado as it was salted and peppered quite perfectly with a hint of fresh herbs smashed (pardon the pun) in them!

Le Mouse choice: Fabulous herb + cheesy toast with bacon

Looking at the menu, my choice was the obvious choice for me, obviously (see nickname). But oh wow, the Snow Pony people didn't name this dish wrongly. It was FABULOUSSSSS. The MELTED CHEESE! It was hot, stringy, gooey and OH SO CHEESILY YUMMY - with a satisfying cheesy kick! I realised I'm sounding like some cheese-obsessed retard (trust me, I'm not...I think) but this is honestly one of the best cheesy toasts I've ever had. Added the fresh herbs melted into the cheese, and crusty seeded bread AND crispy bacon...nom nom nom. Very very happy. Very very satisfied. I should add that the bacon was made just the I like it - crisped and done just right without being fatty/burnt. Thumbs up!

Another house special: Lemonade scones

We knew these scones are massively popular, so we very cleverly asked to reserve some scones upon arrival - and snagged the last two they have left (yippee). They were served with blackberry (yay Blackberry!) and chantilly cream. The scones were crumbly and very tasty in the melt-in-your-mouth way, especially with a dollop of cream and a smear of jam. We were all especially taken with the cream, all of us found it to be very good and a fantastic accompaniment for the scones!

Price wise: all of our food, plus the usual coffees that goes with every single brunch came to just slightly below AUD$80. I'm pretty happy with the service as well - the staff is cheerful and friendly.

Overall, definitely a breakfast/brunch spot that goes into the recs/for keeps list. It probably is a good idea to go a little earlier especially during weekends, and be prepared to wait.

Snow Pony
95 Whitehorse Road
Balwyn VIC 3103
(03)9816 8911

- Mouse

P.S. a little trivia - do you peeps know why it's called Snow Pony? It's a clever word play on its location - Whitehorse Road. :P

MART 130

Brunching is one of our favourite things to do (so expect to see a few posts about brunch spots)...and MART130 is personally one of MY favourite spots. I've heard/read a lot about MART 130 previously...how it's a play on the word 'tram' spelled backwards, and how it's located at stop 130. It always sounded really interesting but it wasn't until my first visit (late last year) that I fell in love with the place.

a seat overlooking albert park on a warm, sunny day...perfect :)

the food : mart eggs (top L), corn fritters (top R), chai latte (bottom L), french toast (bottom R)

I've eaten all the above after 3 visits to MART 130. They were all yummy and the portions were incredibly generous (in my opinion). The mart eggs included eggs with chives, mushrooms and truffle oil - I love every ingredient separately, I love them together :) The corn fritters layered with crispy bacon, went really well with the salsa. Finally, french toast made from brioche with maple syrup topped with bacon...slurp! I have a rule with food - never mix sweet and salty together (e.g. no sweet drinks in the middle of my meal)...bacon with maple syrup is the only exception :)

strolling in Albert park and squealing over doggies :)

And after a hearty brunch, one can walk off some calories in the park...and if one is as fortunate as we were, one may run into a friendly dog-walker walking more than half a dozen of beautiful beautiful doggies!! So happy :)

The food is certainly of standard, the staff friendly...the location, I would give it 101% if I could. Not sure if I would still feel the same on a cold winter day...but you can be sure I will think of brunch at MART130 when the sun is out!

MART 130
107 Canterbury Rd
Middle Park, 3206
(03)9690 8831

-MM-

issus Cafe Bar

Last Friday, Mouse brought me to this place that she had been raving about ~ issus Cafe Bar ~ to try the brekky, especially their French toast. So, here we go around 11am to have our brunch.

yup, its one of the restaurants at this lane

Melbourne is fairly famous for its hidden, cozy cafes which are mostly in little lanes and I personally rather enjoy having meals/coffees at those hidden places.

cosy little place to have our brunch =)

To start off, Mouse had ordered Mint Hot Chocolate (part of Winter Special Menu) and I had Chai Latte.

Mint Hot Chocolate, $3.50 & Chai Latte, $3.50 as well

I like my Chai Latte. Its one of the better ones tt I had recently =) According to mouse, the mint hot chocolate is a winner - unlike most mint chocolates, the mint was fresh and minty, and does not taste syurpy. The hot chocolate left a really awesome aftertaste of chocolate with a whiff of fresh mint on the tastebuds. So, she said, even if they used mint syrup, that's some high quality mint syrup hence Mouse is very happy indeed. Too bad I can't tolerate mint flavour in coffees, ice-cream and cookies, thus, I can't comprehend how tasty was that =P

Nice little flower on top of my chai. I wonder how they made that...

Yeah, our mains here! Oooo, upon Mouse's recommendation, I ordered the French Toast with bacons & sausages and Mouse had Big Breakfast.

My French Toast with bacons & sausages, $10.90

Ahhh..*drool*

This breakky came with a bottle of maple syrup where u can pour AS MUCH SYRUP AS U LIKE on the french toast =D OOOoooOOOO I enjoyed this breakky man. Bacons...Eggs... sweet Maple Syrups...!! HAHA. I can't resist those as the bacons are crisp on the egde and the toasts are just scrumptious, esp with some maple syrup on them. Gosh, its almost sinful to have this as breakky as one can only c the combo as greasy, unhealthy, high-blood pressure, fat, too sweet, diabetes, calouries, cholesterol... etc! =D But I can't help myself. LOL. One thing was that the bread was a bit too thick and some of the bacons were burnt (I know some ppl really like those burnt parts but not me =) ). Other than tt, oooooooooo I like!

Mouse's Big Breakfast,$11.90

Bacons, sausages, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, toasts, hash browns

Mouse is generally quite happy with her Big Breakfast. It was plentiful and worth the money with lots and lots of food. The tomatoes were good and the mushrooms were herby and tasty (although it loses to Ludo's ). The sausages were meaty and nice and the accompanying thick toast with fried eggs rounded off everything nicely. Her only complaint would be that the bacon was 1/4 BURNT (Mouse doesn't eat charcoal-flavoured bacon) and the bread was cut a bit too thickly. Thinner slices would be better.

In brief, both of us just really contented with the food we had. The portion were rather big and we could not finish them (mainly the breads and other bits n pieces). Mouse said that the last time she went, the bread was thinner and hence v crispy and make the portion just nice. B4 I end this, just wanna say that sometimes I wonder yy oily,meaty,crispy food are not healthy. sigh. In regardless, I will definitely go back =)


San

issus Cafe Bar
8-10 Centre Place
Melbourne 3000 VIC
Phone: (03) 96638844

Ludo

I don't often have classes that start at 1PM, so when given the chance, I decided to make use of my looong morning and have a nice breakfast. In which I hadn't really done since coming back to Melbourne. My breakfasts mostly consisted of, if I'm early, cereal while preparing to go to uni or, if I'm late, stuffing bread/banana/whatever food into my mouth as I run after the tram (story of my life, running after trams).

Anyway! No one could really do breakfast with me due to the all evil of classes and work and what have you - so I had my usual foodie San go with me. We decided to try somewhere new and decided on Ludo's (review by the breakfast blog) just because it's near the city and I love pesto.

Ludo's is actually quite hidden (or as San said, 'not in our part of town') - somewhere that I wouldn't really think of going into even if I walked past. :D It's a nice little cafe-style place like the usuals, nothing unusual about the set up.

We had drinks to start off with, and as I cannot function without caffeine like all self-respecting university students (I'm cutting down, I swear), I grabbed myself a Skinny Latte ($3.00) and San had a Chai Latte ($3.50).

Looks skinny eh?

My latte was a success. FYI, Ludo's uses Illy as their coffee blend. The coffee flavour was strong and pleasant and a nice wake up call. Ahh, could feel my whiskers coming to life, HAHHAHA.

The spread of chai.

San pouring.

San's Chai was decidedly a letdown. Despite the nice presentation of a pretty cup and honey, it was far from authentic chai and was very weak in taste and flavour, watery even. Ugh. Needless to say, she wasn't a shining 'Sun'.

We both ordered the same breakfast after reading the review - Pesto Scrambled Eggs with Roasted Tomatoes and Mushrooms ($12.50). The eggs were $10.00 by themselves and mushrooms were an additional $2.50.

Breakfast is served, dudes!

The price did seem a little steep for breakfast - after all, one could have a big breakfast with hash browns, bacon and sausages for $10.00 at some other city cafes. But to be honest, we were truly truly satisfied.

Tomatoes + Eggs + Toast + Most Amazing Mushrooms EVER.

We both love the oven roasted tomatoes. It was nicely seasoned with a sprinkle of herbs and not roasted to the point of charcoal-black. It was soft and squishy and really yummy. The pesto eggs were something new to us both - and I really do like it. The pesto went great with the eggs and there were a lot of eggs in the scrambled, served on crusty buttery bread. I couldn't tell whether the pesto was fresh or bottled, but who cares, it tasted awesome. Yum! Also what I liked was that the eggs weren't really seasoned, and we can add salt and pepper to our taste. :)

The highlight of the whole thing? THE MUSHROOMS. OMG. If that is what mushroom heaven is like, I'll gladly be a mushroom my next life, be a really charitable mushroom and go to mushroom heaven. Except I'd be eaten by someone as greedy as me and...okay I'm crapping but OMG OMG the mushrooms!! They were the BEST I've ever tasted. Buttery, salty (but not too much of course) and fragrant and amazingly yummy. And just the right amount served to round off our breakfast dish!

And because we talk a lot and we talk and talk and talk without stopping, I got thirsty and ordered a Cappuccino ($3.00). (No, I swear I really am cutting down on caffeine)

Yeah I just like to post photos (not like a cappuccino is the rarest thing on earth).

Flavour was a little lacking compared to my latte but good coffee all the same. Definitely going back there again if only for those wow-tastic mushrooms!!

Mouse

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Ludo
118 Queen Street
Melbourne 3000
Phone: (03) 9670 9488

Sunday late brekkie at Cafe Delphi

Me and a couple of frens went 2 Moonee Ponds yesterday, around 10am, for a meeting. Bcoz some of us didnt manage to hav breakfast b4 this, hence we all quickly went to this cafe to get some caffeine/hot chocolate/cookies/sandwich.

The first thing came to my vision is this range of different cakes, cookies and some sandwiches on the display cupboard.


I would lov to sit down n slowly savour one of the cakes, but due to time constraint, i ordered the below:

My brekkie ~ hot chocolate & 2 cookies

The hot chocolate is not bad, quite concentrated. Enjoyed it =) and the cookies are cookies. pretty standard taste.

mouse's brekkie ~ chai latte & jam-tart cookies

She ordered her current obsessive favourite drink ~ chai latte, but its made from tea bag. So, Mouse was =( and moaning about the tea bag chai like bratty Mouse she is when she doesn't get what she wants. She also ordered a jam-tart-cookie thing that tasted rather good. The top biscuit bit and the bottom bits are made of different textures with the top bit more pastry-ish. The jam is yummy but she thinks it can be a little less sweet. Coffee would go really well with the cookies but Mouse wasn't allowed caffeine because she was SICK [again, =( ]. This part is by Mouse

San

Cafe Delphi

11 Puckle St
Moonee Ponds

Phone: (03)93704707