Grigons & Orr, North Melbourne

Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage, and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon, and spam; egg, bacon, sausage, and spam; spam, bacon, sausage, and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam; spam, sausage, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato, and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg, and spam; spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, and spam; or Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle pate, brandy, and a fried egg on top, and spam - Monty Python breakfast menu

Unfortunately there was only one spam dish on the menu at Grigons & Orr, 445 Queensberry Street (corner of Chetwynd), North Melbourne, Tel +61 3 9663 5192. Because spam was the highlight of the pan fried spiced ham topped with scrambled egg and drizzled with truffle oil. And you know something's wrong when the highlight came straight from a tin.



The eggs were your average scrambled eggs. The toast was your average thin-sliced toast. And the truffle oil was so lightly drizzled as to escape detection by my amateur taste buds. This may have been the desired outcome of an ingenious plan to cast spam as the spicy star on a bland stage devoid of distracting flavours. Or it may have been a bad day in the kitchen. It was certainly a bad day for hash browns. Mine was extremely doughy and barely palatable.

Could this really be the same place that Preston, Valent and the copycats had raved about? Was it my fault for ordering spam spam spam and eggs, rather than apple fritters, cous cous porridge, or pancakes with Barbados cream? Maybe so (although others have slammed the pancakes).

It is a quaint little venue. They do sell mixed lollies (whoopee). The coffee is good. And the staff are friendly. But, in my biased opinion, if the eggs aren't up to snuff, who gives a crap about crocheted blankets?

13/20 "spam"

Pearl Cafe, Richmond

Make no mistake. I am a greedy pig. So things are pretty bad when I put the fork down half-way through my eggs. But that's exactly what happened this morning at Pearl Cafe, 599 Church Street, Richmond, Tel +61 3 9427 1307. What a train wreck.



The original Pearl turned coddled eggs into an art form. Pearl Cafe turned out coddled eggs that made my stomach churn. First, they wheel out a dish that it absolutely swimming in raw egg white. Not coddled. Not lightly cooked. Raw. After a short discussion with my waiter we agree that coddled eggs are not supposed to be raw, so they are sent back for a bit more coddling, or so I think. A while later I am presented with a plate of hard, rubbery eggs, the remnants of which are pictured above. Let's not molly-coddle these people. It was disgusting.

Normally, the combination of mushrooms, double-smoked bacon, sage and burnt butter is a winner. Somehow, this dish kills the magic. The mushrooms were wet and bland, not buttery and tasty. The bacon was wet and limp. The toasted multi-grain was dry and butter-less. And the sage was nowhere to be found.

But it's not all bad. If you go to Pearl and order the muesli, or one of the bacon, egg, lettuce and tomato panini, you will be very happy. The french toasted peach sandwhich with vanilla marscapone might also be good. And the venue is slick, if a little noisy, with cute touches like Japanese Geisha salt and pepper mills.

Just avoid the coddled eggs.

13/20 "stick to the muesli"

Columbus Cafe and Bar, Boston

Maybe they do a great brunch at Columbus Cafe and Bar, 535 Columbus Avenue, Boston (South End), Tel +1 (617) 247-9001. And maybe Joaquin Pheonix will make a great rapper. Or maybe not. At the end of the day, these are matters of opinion.



If you believe the opinions on Yelp, this place deserves 4 out of 5 stars and is good for brunch. One Yelper even rates the Maine Eggs Benedict her favorite brunch dish ever. As Flavor Fav would say, don't believe the hype. This just proves that too much opinion can be just as bad as too little. Because there is no way I would rate the eggs benny as anything other than a bare pass. The poached eggs were good, and the crab cakes weren't bad, but it was all downhill from there. The hollandaise was like cold whipped butter, completely devoid of tang. The muffins were absolutely rock hard and stale. The home fries were too greasy. And I really don't see the point of the cold slide of tomato.

I have no doubt that loyal locals will be spitting out their Vermont Scrambles or choking on their chorizo as they read this. So let me just say that I get that it's cozy, I liked the coffee, and the staff seemed very nice. My gripe is the food. Like Joaquin's rapping, it needs much work. In my humble opinion, of course.

13/20 "over hyped"

The Paramount, Boston

Two things struck me as particularly un-american about The Paramount, 44 Charles Street, Beacon Hill, Boston, Tel +1 617-720-1152. First, they know how to spell omelette. Second, in this land of super-dooper-service, they offer virtually no service at all. And yet a long line of eager diners snakes up and down the counter where, after about ten minutes shuffling forward, they can place an order, wait for their food, then scurry for a table.



So why do people wait 20 minutes for no service? Because it's cheap. Not normally a word you associate with Beacon Hill. Not only cheap, but good. My triple stack of blueberry pancakes was, as the kids would say, fat. Fluffy, too. All it needed was a generous slurp of maple syrup to juice things up a bit. Only $5.50. Sweeeet.

The coffee was shite. But this is America, so you just have to force it down like a teenager learning to drink beer. Presumably, one day, you just wake up and suddenly it tastes good. Mmmm... what a fine brew this is... top me up girlfriend.

Cheapest of all is the breakfast special of two eggs, toast, home fries and coffee (the shite stuff), for a mere $5.95. A side of turkey sausage will set you back another $4. And most of the omelettes will fill you up for less than $8.

13/20 "self-service"

Quaff, Toorak

Toorak, home to Lou Richards, Eddie McGuire and Nathan Buckley (you just can't find a good mansion in Collingwood these days), is also home to a restaurant called Quaff, 436 Toorak Road, Toorak, Tel +61 3 9827 4484. They only do breakfast on weekends, but they do serve a very respectable Eggs Benedict.



Nice toasty muffins. Very good hollandaise. Good ham and good (but not great) eggs. The side of sauteed spinach was also very nice. And if plain old Benedict seems a bit dull, they offer Chili Eggs, which is a bacon Benedict served with chili concassee (whatever that is).

The menu is pretty much all eggs, with a couple of exceptions: toasted fruit bread or pancakes with vanilla bean ice cream and maple syrup. Bad luck if you want something exotic, like muesli.

The venue is dark and plush, a bit like the interior of the 2008 Range Rover Sport LE. So the local toffs can cruise down from Clendon Road in the "tractor" and feel like they never left the 4 car garage.

13/20 "what, no muesli?"

Black Ruby, Carlton

I can say with absolute certainty that I have no recollection of any hot, naked lap-dancers when I had breakfast at Black Ruby, 344 Rathdowne St, Carlton North, Tel +61 3 9348 2777. But I was pissed. So pissed, in fact, that I can't recall what happened. Except, of course, that nothing inappropriate happened. That I can recall.



Actually, I'm lying. I wasn't pissed. And, unfortunately, I do recall what happened.

It was a breakfast with all the consistency of Rudd's recollections of a Soiree at Scores. Nice beans and bangers. Nasty eggs. Tasty Bacon. Bland hash browns. Sensational relish. Soggy toast. But it was the eggs that did the most damage. If poached eggs are as deformed and damaged as what they served us, then you scrape the pieces into the bin and start again. You don't scrape them onto a plate and serve them up (the picture doesn't do them justice, but you can see a disembodied yolk if you look closely).

I think the ricotta and blueberry hotcakes would have been a better option. Or maybe the honey toasted muesli with apricot, peach compote and natural yoghurt.

Service, coffee and venue were all good, without being great. A bit like Kevin's lap-dance, really. Quite forgettable.

13/20 "nice relish"

Morgans at 401, Melbourne

When I saw the blackboard special of poached eggs and bacon on potato roesti, I decided it was time to try breakfast at Morgans at 401, 401 Collins Street, Melbourne, Tel +61 3 9224 5196. My only hope was that Morgan's breakfast performance would be better than its recent federal election tipping performance.



Poor old Gary Morgan got it all wrong in 2001 when he tipped a Kim Beazley landslide, only to fail again in 2004 by tipping a narrow win to Mark "train wreck" Latham. He may not actually have tipped an ALP victory in Afghanistan, but he does seem to have a nasty habit of over-cooking ALP support by about 2 percentage points.

Luckily, Morgans didn't overcook my breakfast. In fact they cooked it just right. The poached eggs were excellent. Nice soft yolks in a vibrant shade of dark orange. The bacon was also very good. Just the right amount of crisp. The only let-down was the roesti, which was too much like a pancake for my taste. It needed more spud.

For a city venue, Morgans has a pretty good range: eggs benedict or florentine ($9.90); omelettes ($9.90); pancakes with blueberries and cream ($9.50); muesli with yoghurt and honey ($5.90); muffins; croissants; toast and more.

And as if to stress that tipping is best left to the experts, the Morgans menu declares: "gratuities not necessary"

13/20 "good eggs"



Eggs & Bacon $7.90 BB100 -21%

Animal Orchestra, Carlton

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: baked-eggs-in-a-pan is the breakfast fad of 2007. And like all true fads, I'm tipping this one won't last. Which isn't good news for Animal Orchestra, 163 Grattan Street, Carlton, Tel +61 3 9349 4944. Baked-eggs-in-a-pan is all they serve (unless you count muesli and toast). But as baked eggs go, the flavours were good.



My main objections to baked eggs are two. First, you sometimes get a slight tinny taste where the food has started to react with the iron of the pan. There were slight hints of this in my serve of eggs, beans and cheese today. Second, the dish is just slightly more annoying to eat than plain old eggs-on-toast. I can never decide whether to hold the toast and dunk it in the eggs, or to rip up bits of toast and sprinkle them through the dish like croutons. Call me picky.

I'm sure there will be baked-egg mavens who will disagree with my fad prediction. And I am quite happy to be proven wrong. But once you've experienced the tinny taste a couple of times, I can't see people going back for more. Maybe the secret is to use enamel pans?

If you like baked eggs, Animal Orchestra certainly has plenty to offer: bacon, tomato mushroom and cheese; potato, leek and shanklish; caramelised witlof and goat's cheese; smoked salmon, dill, capers and onions; and sardines and fetta.

The venue is quirky. Outside they have lots of little stools for Melbourne Uni types to perch on. Inside it looks like someone wallpapered the place with random magazine clippings, including a sprinkling of soft porn (or maybe it was art?).

13/20 "fully baked"

Vic Harbour, Melbourne Docklands

One thing that always amazes me is poor service in a deserted venue. You'd think that quiet times would be an opportunity to impress what few customers you have with swift, attentive, one-on-one service. Not so at Vic Harbour Kitchen and Bar, 70 NewQuay Promenade, Docklands, Tel +61 3 9670 5550. The staff were friendly enough. But most of the time they were nowhere to be seen.



The mediocre service was all the more surprising in light of Docklands' growing reputation as a hot-bed for personal services. It's a mysterious phrase "personal services". Melbourne City Council's own figures suggest that it's the largest industry in Docklands, employing over 2,500 people. Assuming they're not all funeral directors, hair-dressers and dry-cleaners, that leaves you with brothel keepers, escort agents and prostitutes (plus a few other odd bods like astrologists, baby-sitters, tattooists and Turkish bath operators). Hmmm... looks like the oldest profession has taken to Docklands like ducks to water. Perhaps this explains why things are a bit slow around breakfast time?

It's not like the food is bad. I had a Traditional English with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and tomato, all piled up on a base of toasted Turkish. The eggs were a bit skimpy, but the rest was very good, especially the sausage. They also do corn fritters with streaky bacon, toasted grain and nut cereal, French toast, pancakes, Benedict, Florentine, Mexican style scrambled eggs and more.

The views are nice, and at around $15-17 for some eggs and a coffee, it's much cheaper than a high-end hooker.

13/20 "nice view"

Poached, Brunswick

As the Labor caucus tries to choose between Harry Potter and Blow-hard Beazley, this morning I faced a difficult choice of my own... where to go and what to have for breakfast? Not crumpets, that much was easy. Not after I read that "Rudd is the thinking woman's crumpet". No, I was in the mood for the old favorite: "Eggs benedict please, with a side of grilled potatoes." And what better place to order poached eggs than a cafe called "Poached", 169 Lygon Street, East Brunswick, Tel +61 3 9387 2396.



It really should come as no surprise to anyone that Kev's taken his Field Marshal's baton out of his backback and given it a good hard polish. Beazley may be a nice guy (Mark Latham would beg to differ), but he really is a total wind-bag and most people don't have a clue what he's mumbling about. Even when he's trying to say "I can keep it simple", he says things like "I have learnt over the course of the past 18 months that simplicity is one of the things I need to carry around with me as a talisman..." Huh? A talis-what? Need I say more?

Speaking of simplicity, I am coming to the view that "special" ingredients are best left out of breakfast classics like eggs benedict. Simple twists can work. But adding slow roasted tomatoes is not what I'd call a simple twist. It was not an improvement on the classic benedict. Otherwise, it was a reasonable effort, with eggs soft-poached, thin slices of grilled gypsy ham, acceptable hollandaise (albeit a tad bland and lacking in lemon) and some grilled slices of spud.

I get the impression that Ange was very happy with the Eggs Florentine at Poached. I can also report that the plate of French toast delivered to the table next to mine looked huge (a big heap with pears, marscapone, topped with crispy bacon, and swimming in maple syrup). Otherwise you can get all the usual stuff like croissants, bircher muesli, eggs and extras (including zucchini, which is rare).

The Lavazza coffee was good, but not great, and the service was swift. As a venue, Poached has a very average, standard, mainstream, cafe vibe, which is not really what you expect to find just a few doors down from Small Block and Sugardough. But it was a good mainstream vibe, if that makes any sense. And excellent value. My eggs benny with two coffees was just over $15.

13/20 "eggs with zucchini"