Cheeky Monkey, Richmond

When you tear a hamstring, does eating bacon speed your recovery? If so, maybe Ben Cousins should start each day with a big serve of bacon and eggs at Cheeky Monkey, 89a Swan Street, Richmond, Tel +61 3 9428 8833. It's not the best breakfast in Tigerland, but they do give you plenty of bacon.



Then again, maybe Swan Street isn't the best place for a recovering drug addict to be starting each day. There were junkies lying in the streets when I was there. OK, there was one junkie. But he was lying in the street. And "Cousins hangs with Junkies" is not the kind of headline Ben needs right now. Not with "good friends" like Fat Ange Venditti fuelling the media flames.

Despite being a cool-looking venue, with a graffiti-style stencil mural of monkeys all over the exterior walls, Cheeky Monkey was a bit of a disappointment. My scrambled eggs, bacon and mushrooms were OK, but why are they using boring white toast when Almost French is baking excellent sourdough right across the road? And cheddar-toasted muffins with eggs, bacon and hollandaise ($14.90) might have been a winner, but for the addition of crispy onion rings and a drizzle of BBQ sauce over the hollandaise. Weird. Even the chive crepes topped with poached egg, smoked salmon, sliced avocado and dill hollandaise ($15.90) sounded better than it looked.

Maybe they do a better job with the jumbo corn fritters, the hotcake stack, or the coconut and banana bread?

The coffee, at least, was good.

15/20 "bacon"