Breakfast at Arcadia Cafe in Gertrude Street

16 Aug Breakfast at Arcadia Cafe in Gertrude Street

This morning was an adventure from start to finish! What a day! The sun was shining all day, but before that, it was 0.1 C – can you even believe it? We couldn’t! It was soooo cold!!

I barely noticed it though, as I was burning energy in my home from the early hours of the morning. I think I finally got up at 3:26, but I can’t remember now. It was a long, dark night. But by 7 am, I was ready to GET OUT and get some food.

My first moment of note was turning the corner in front of what used to be the Noble Experiment and seeing ground-up yellow stuff all over the ground. Nearby was our resident Collingwood homeless man. And he was absolutely dead to the world. Covered in blankets, with debris, stale food, doughnuts and all sorts of other vermin-loving snacks, he lay there sleeping. I think that this is his default position because I feel sure that support people in the City of Yarra must come and help him to find shelter. Or at least that is what it seems sometimes, but then he comes back. It must be so tough!

Then I realised pretty quickly, that cafes on Smith Street don’t open at 7 am, like some of the coffee places do in the side streets. I was planning to breakfast at Alimentari for a change, but they weren’t yet open. So I walked to the **top (other people call it the bottom) of Smith Street and got some ideas for the shoes and bags that I need FROM SECOND-HAND SHOPS!! (Such a great way to save money and get good stuff, me thinks).

When I did get to the top of Smith Street (so-called because it is at the top of the hill, even if it is south, compared to North Collingwood), I turned right into Gertrude Street.

By this time it was nearly 8 am, and some of the cafes were OPEN FOR BUSINESS. I chose the Arcadia cafe. It was the first in the strip, for sure. But they had a menu outside, and that helped me imagine what I would eat. ARCHIE’S next door had no menu, and I thought it might be deep-fried burger fare, but I am not sure. Urgh.

Arcadia Cafe – Gertrude Street

The dish that I wanted to eat at Arcadia was a corn (and zucchini??) fritter with salad, corn salsa and mushrooms (option of salmon or bacon instead). This appealed to me, because I had already eated an egg back at 4 am or something, and because it had a vegetarian option – so easy! YES PLEASE 🙂 To mushrooms!

It was a TASTE SENSATION. Every mouthful was an explosion of flavour. The fritters themselves were so earthy and I think they did have zucchini in them (favourite!). I was worried about the trans fats in the fried fritters, but that was my only concern. The sauce dollops you can see on the side of the plate were so flavoursome, I think a kind of paprika ranch dressing in a way. And then when I bit into the salad, the acidity of the dressing on the leaf salad totally cleared my palate and around I went again. The mushrooms were perfectly cooked. Tasty and moist. And when added to a mouthful of corn fritter and sauce, just exploded flavours in my mouth. The corn salsa was a lovely surprise and very refreshing!

4.5 STARS (0.5 lost for the trans/deep-fried fats) – I am sure will live, hehe. In every other way this dish was PERFECT!

Coffee to finish

Lastly, I had a coffee that was a bit different to my usual order. A soy latte. As I wanted to save some coffee space for later (which never eventuated, but anyway!)

It really was the perfect breakfast! The staff were lovely and it was not crazy expensive. At least, not for an occasional treat like today was!

So, so nice!