Mart 130 Muesli

After much raving about the eggs and fritters at Mart 130, today I decided to test drive the Bircher muesli. A big bowl of wet bircher, topped with fresh strawberries, pear, melon, orange and grapes, and sprinkled with a top coating of crunchy toasted granola. The mix of soft and crunchy textures worked very well. Very filling.

Beetroot, Melbourne

I wouldn't recommend eating beetroot for breakfast. But I would recommend eating breakfast at Beetroot, 123 Hardware Street, Melbourne, Tel +61 3 9600 0695. Especially if you like bircher muesli. They do a very thick and fruity bircher topped with berries and a generous sprinkling of whole pistachios. Yum.



Beetroot is all nice and white and modern and sleek, like an iPod. It's more of a Sydney look than a Melbourne look, but luckily it comes with friendly Melbourne service. They also score bonus points for quirky details, like serving a chocolate freckle with your coffee. Or maybe a micro-muffinette (the tiniest I've ever seen).

Despite naming itself after a root vegetable, Beetroot seems best at the sweet stuff: French toast stuffed with berries and topped with marscapone; fresh mango cheek with yoghurt, toasted almonds and granola; or toasted banana and hazelnut bread with golden syrup butter. And that's just a taste.

About the only "opportunity for improvement" is the eggs. The scrambled eggs were nice and creamy (Bills-style), but you should tell people if they're laced with pesto (lucky for me, I quite like a bit of pesto). The problem was the toast. It was a whole slab of Turkish pide, uncut and seemingly untoasted (it was hard to tell). Maybe they lost the breadknife?

16/20 "best bircher"



Eggs & Bacon $7.50 BB100 -25%

Balgownie Retreat, Yarra Valley

This morning, I had a 3 course breakfast. Not just muesli. Not just eggs. Not just pastries. I had the whole lot: bircher muesli with berries; poached eggs and extras; and a couple of little baby croissants. You won't go hungry at the Balgownie Estate Vineyard Retreat and Spa, Melba Highway, Yarra Glen, Tel +61 3 9730 0700.



The Bircher was very good, with quite a nutty flavour. The poached eggs were close to perfect. The extras were... in a word... small: one little pork snag; a mini hash brown; a few mushrooms; a tiny serve of spinach; and half a roast tomato. The croissants were also small, but good. But with so many courses to get through, small serves are good serves.



The Balgownie Yarra Valley Retreat is an excellent spot for a love-in, which is exactly why we were there. Get away from the office, gaze up at the blue sky, then lock yourself in a room and talk about blue sky, business models, monetisation of eyeballs, and other such crazy talk. If the buzzword bingo gets out of control, make everyone watch Startup.com. We did. It's a cack.

Whether it's worth driving all the way here specifically for breakfast, I'm not so sure. It is good. But it's by no means cheap.

16/20 "bircher and berries"

Las Chicas Expands

Las Chicas has expanded (which is good news). So has my waistline (which is not). So this morning I decided to try something new. I ordered "healthy" food: a glass of Bircher muesli with poached fruit (not bad); and a half serve of carrot and date loaf with pistachio ricotta (very good). What could be healthier than carrots and dates?



But then I read about a recent American fashion industry "health initiative" and got very confused. Apparently "healthy snacks" like carrot sticks are being used by fashionistas to fatten up skinny models. For serious. It's OK for anorexic models to drag their skeletal bods up and down the catwalk. Just as long as they have a few carrot sticks to munch on backstage.

At least the Italians are saying no to skeletons. They've banned ultra-skinny models from the Milan catwalk shows this year. Maybe they should feed them Bomboloni for breakfast, too?

Anyway, enough of that.

The new, supersized Las Chicas has annexed the place next door, punching a doorway and a few little portholes through the wall in the process. I sat in the old bit, but the new bit looked quite snazzy, with a long banquette along one wall and a bar across the front window. Hopefully this extra capacity will translate into shorter queues. I didn't have to wait at all.

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"