Enni, Thornbury

At least a couple of people have tipped me off to the baked beans at Enni, 915 High Street, Thornbury, Tel +61 3 9484 8288. Unlike the crappy beans you might use to pelt the paparazzi, these are fancy house-baked beans, with a nice light tomato sauce. Not better than Babka, but very good nonetheless.



The corn pancakes were also good, although I prefer fritters with a high corn-count. They serve them with bacon, tomato, a poached egg and a splodge of tomato and capsicum chutney.

If you're on a budget (and let's face it, working families are doing it tough... just ask Kev), Enni offers some tasty $7 options: two eggs on sourdough toast; creamy oat porridge with berry compote and white chocolate chunks; or Bircher muesli with yoghurt, sultanas, dried apricots, honey, roasted almonds and grated apple. Yum yum yum.

14/20 "beanz meanz..."



Eggs & Bacon $9.50 BB100 -5%

Glass at the Hilton, Sydney

As Matthew Evans would say, it's a swank venue. No, not Coco Roco. I'm talking about Glass Brasserie, Level 2, 488 George Street, Sydney. The swank and, dare I say, spiffing restaurant at the Hilton. But is it Sydney's finest breakfast? According to the propaganda floating around the hotel, yes. According to me, no. But that's just my opinion.



I wouldn't go so far as to call the scrambled eggs "outstandingly dull", but they were a little bit bland. Nothing a bit of salt and pepper couldn't fix (except that my pepper grinder was empty). Otherwise, my a la carte order of "fresh country eggs" looked like it had been freshly spooned off the buffet spread and onto a plate. A bucket-load of limp, greasy bacon; a few very nice little snags; good sauteed spinach; some soft tomato (which I didn't eat); and some dull mushrooms.

Technically I shouldn't have got the mushrooms, which were a feature of the $27 "plated breakfast", and I should have got "herb roasted potatoes" (part of my $17 breakfast). I asked were my spuds were and was quickly presented with a side of disc-shaped hash browns (with no obvious sign of herbs).

Apart from this plating mix-up, the service was attentive, swift and polite, as you'd expect in a swank, spiffing venue. Basically, it's a good spot for a power-breakfast, but there's nothing remarkable about the food. And let's not forget the warm and fuzzy feeling you'll get from supporting the Hilton family during this difficult time.

14/20 "swank"

Pepper, Flemington

These days, 44 Pin Oak Crescent, Flemington is a cafe called Pepper, Tel +61 3 9372 2726. Back in the good old days it was known as Girdwood's Hygienic Library. Not a filthy, disease-ridden library where any old scum could poison the books with their nasty germs. But a nice, clean, private lending library where the books were fumigated with formalin between each read. I'm guessing Pepper smells much better than it did in the good old days. But you never know what you might catch off the communal newspapers.



With quite a few glowing reviews under its belt, I was hoping for a top tier breakfast. The sweetcorn hotcakes, however, were no match for Mart 130 or Replete Providore. They were good enough, but nothing to rave about. I quite liked the combination of crispy bacon, rocket, tomato and aioli. I was also impressed with the poached egg I ordered as a side. A nice, fresh, free range egg, poached pretty well.

Other food options worth noting include the Breakfast of Champions (eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomato and homemade beans on toast) and the Pepper's Breakfast (smoked salmon, homemade potato latkes, tomato, spinach and tomato relish).

Service was a bit slow, but friendly, and the Monte coffee was good (for an extra 20 cents you can upgrade to an organic East Timorese brew). Weather permitting, they have a few tables on the street outside, where you can fumigate your lungs with Marlboro Lights.

14/20 "latkes"



Eggs & Bacon $8.00 BB100 -20%

Pushka, Melbourne

Pretty soon someone will be setting up a cafe in a sewer or an old lift well or a wheelie bin or something. Because the cafe down the alley off the laneway has been done. And one of the best examples is Pushka, Presgrave Place, Melbourne (that's the laneway filled with wheelie bins, milk crates and interesting wall art, out the back of the Capitol Theatre).



Pushka is ace. The serve cool stuff like coco pops, boiled eggs and soldiers, and "crazy toast" with vegemite and avo. And they do an impressive breakfast bagel called "The King" filled with cheese, prosciutto, avo, fried egg, mayo and something else but I forget what. Nice fresh bagels, which makes all the difference.

The ambience is best described as uber-grunge, with room for a handful of people inside, and a scattering of folding chairs, tables and milk crates in the laneway. There's a certain serenity to just sitting there, boxed in by buildings, sipping cappucino and staring up at the sky. It helps that they make an excellent cappucino (Coffee Supreme).

14/20 "crazy toast"

Feedings at Readings, Port Melbourne

You can get all sorts of things from Feedings at Readings, 253 Bay St, Port Melbourne, Tel +61 3 9681 9876. Books, DVDs, music and talking Sebastian dolls. They even have celebrity book launches and stuff. Come here on November 20 and you'll get to meet Bill Grainger as he waxes lyrical about the joys of home cooking. Step 1, get yourself a fancy Poliform kitchen. Step 2, buy a copy of Bill's new book Every Day. Step 3, scramble a few eggs with a gallon of cream and cook. Easy.



I decided to go all healthy this morning, with a big bowl of Bircher muesli, topped with yoghurt and honey, and dusted with cinnamon. I'm no muesli maven, but to my amateur palate this was a magnificent bowl of white sludge. It was almost as good as a plate of eggs.

Although I didn't try the eggs, I did eyeball a nearby plate and they looked OK. You can get poached or scrambled free range eggs with most of the usual extras, including house baked beans, spinach, mushies, bacon, ham, chorizo, etc. They also do Benedict (with ham), Florentine (with spinach) and Atlantic (with smoked salmon and basil pesto).

14/20 "books and bircher"