Snacks and the City: The brunch bunch
SALIFE food columnist Paul Wood hops out of bed early in search of the best brunches he can find. Champagne, anyone?
I’d like to propose a toast. The toast needs to be sliced from a pillowy brioche loaf, dipped in a creamy egg mixture, lightly fried and served piled high with banana and caramelised yogurt with roasted slivers of almond and drenched in maple syrup. That’s how they serve it at Fred Eatery in Aldgate, a cosy, but stylish, spot that has been consistently serving up some of the best brunch outside of the city for years.
Bucking typical trends, Fred also serves a side of Asian in their brilliant brunch menu. Prepare yourself for Malaysian Bang Bang with barbecued red chicken sitting atop a sweet and spicy rice patty that’s topped with a fresh and herbaceous little salad.
While French toast isn’t exactly a national dish, flexible places, such as Hey Jupiter in the city’s East End, have adopted this bastardised delicacy, naming it Toast Français. The rest of their menu is quintessential, with the ultimate Croque Monsieur loaded with bechamel, or a breakfast cassoulet with smoked ham and pork belly plus confit duck forming the perfect menage a trois of breakfast meats slow cooked in a bean fuelled gravy.
Of course, true French style is refined simplicity, and it’s Hey Jupiter’s Champagne breakfast for two that will really get your morning started.
Whatever your selection du jour, you should always finish with digestif from the list of A.M. drinks. Breakfast Martini, anyone?
When it comes to food, nostalgia hits best when we try something new that reminds us of something we once experienced. When Clarence Park’s eatery and deli, Our Boy Roy, created their drinks’ list they decided to shake things up. Milkshakes such as the Bubble O Bill, Golden Gaytime, or Splice will have your olfactory whisking you back to your childhood from the first sip and grinning your way through whatever delightful culinary creation you’ve decided to eat alongside.
On for young and old, the establishment’s sweet hotcakes are the real hero here, and if you time things just right, you won’t be able to resist taking away their lunchtime sandos or picking up a little treat from their carefully curated grocery section. It is a deli, after all.
The natural evolution of breakfast or brunch is to go bottomless, and venues around town go all-out to satiate the thirstiest weekend drinkers with set menus or added drink packages. Whether it’s hair of the dog, or an early start to the party, we should take our (Sunday best) hats off to places like Bloom in the West, or 78 Rundle in the East, who lay it all out on the table, and your only choice is whether to leave the car (and the kids) at home.
Since opening, Thebarton’s Bloom has treated brunch as an adventure, making use of their open-flamed coal fire to serve up house favourites such as saganaki style haloumi with honey and herbs, or taking brunch to an entirely new plateau thanks to barbecued lobster served atop cheese and chive waffles with kombu hollandaise and a poached egg.
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Then, 78 Rundle in Kent Town leans a little traditional in its offering, their halloumi is just as herbaceous, but lands in more savoury territory, with some heady fried mushrooms and lightly pickled onion balanced by lemon and thyme. But it’s the loaded bagels and burgers that seem to keep the breakfast bandits coming back for more.
For me, it’s the breakfast cocktails. Someone at 78 Rundle has some pretty slick bar skills and while plenty of us might be struggling to get up in time to make our brunch booking the morning after the night before, they don’t mind getting up early. Recently I’ve come to learn that the days of bacon-and-everything-loaded Bloody Marys are (thankfully) over, that margaritas can definitely pass for a breakfast beverage, and that the perfect start to the day is, in fact, a little sweet-and-sour cocktail called Strawberry Kisses.
I’ll drink to that.
This article first appeared in the July 2024 print edition of SALIFE Magazine.
