Breakfast Series - Pablo of Newfarm

www.pablonewfarm.com/

It's no secret that I eat out a lot, I mean my blog is like a personal journal of how much food I've eaten in the last twelve months.  As a food blogger, I'm always looking for an excuse to go out for dinner or breakfast or lunch, well, any time or reason in fact.  You would think this amount or rich restaurant food would take its toll on a body and I've been pretty luck, up until recently that is...

I recently went and had my eyes tested and apart from getting the news that I now needed glasses, the optometrist dropped a bombshell for me, I had cholesterol rings in my eyes and she recommended a doctors visit.  Crap, it seemed as if my lavish eating out lifestyle had finally caught up with me.  Timing is a funny thing but the day my glasses arrived I watched a documentary called "Eat Fast and Live Longer" by a guy called Dr Michael Mosley (see documentary here).  Talk about serendipity, were was a solution to all of my problems, a way to reduce my cholesterol and solve a myriad of other potential health problems and a way to possibly live longer!!  All I had to do was fast for two days a week, then I could eat whatever I wanted for the other five days - a bloggers dream.

You may ask why I am telling you this?  Well apart from now being completely sold on the idea and have been recommending it to everyone, its the first time I have typed up a post while fasting.  I'm not sure how it's going to go.

I'd already had one fasting day during the week and survived pretty well but had responded by heading out over the weekend to have some heavy and rich French cuisine (see post here).  My next thought was to have a huge breakfast to finish off the weekend's dining out and I wanted to check out somewhere completely new.  Pablo in New Farm has been on my mind for a while, ever since driving past it one morning and seeing the queue to get in.  A heap of my friends have been saying great things about Pablo but I've held off because their menu didn't carry my normal breakfast of bacon and eggs.  Throwing caution the wind, I thought I would head along and see what I could wrangle.

Pablo is deceptively large for such a little cafe.  The many times I had driven or walked past the little cafe had not yielded it's secret that there is a dining room out the back.  For some reason I thought it was just a little 'hole-in-the-wall' spot, a thought that was dispelled once I went in to grab a seat while SC parked the car.  I wouldn't say that it's a massive cafe, it's just a whole lot bigger than I was expecting.  

Thinking there could have been queues to get in, we had purposely arrived pretty early but thankfully Pablo was still fairly empty.  I received lovely welcome and was offered my choice of seats and grabbed a seat that gave me a good view of the cafe.  As soon as I had taken my seat I had a couple of menus placed in front of me and asked what I would like to drink.  I bravely, and as it turned out correctly, ordered SC her half strength latte, not knowing for sure if she wanted tea or a coffee.  There were a couple of interesting looking smoothies on offer for me but I went for a good reliable flavour combination with the strawberries, blueberries, vanilla ice cream and milk.  It was a super smoothie and felt really healthy too.

The menu at Pablo is pretty contemporary, there are not a lot of traditional items on the menu and as I sadly came to the realisation that there was nothing I really wanted on the menu, I started to think about fallback positions.  I had a little spark of hope as I started to break apart the menu and realised I could get a decent breakfast together if I could just do a mash up of different ingredients from each of the menu items.  

SC had no such issue and immediately opted for the brioche french toast with macerated seasonal berries, saffron fairy floss, homemade vanilla & pistachio ice cream, honey-roasted nuts and heilala vanilla syrup. When the brioche was delivered it was clear that SC had picked a winner, it was a very pretty dish.  The brioche french toast was a lovely golden brown and incredibly light with the right amount of toasting, giving it a firm yet giving texture.  The pistachio ice cream was slowly melting on the toasted brioche which soaked into the bread to give it a sweet flavour that really enhanced the breakfast.  The fresh berries were lovely, although SC left the raspberries for me to eat, and complimented the vanilla syrup nicely.  To finish the dish off, there were some candied pistachio nuts for texture.  It was a magnificent way to start the day

Thankfully, the team at Pablo agreed for my request of a mash up and I ended up with some dill scrambled eggs, some grilled halloumi and some grilled chorizo.  I'd actually spotted some bacon and cherry tomatoes on other dishes but was told that they were needed for their main dishes, so you win some and loose some.  The scrambled eggs were the bright yellow colour that signifies farm fresh eggs  and had an interesting flavour which came from the dill, which I quite liked.  The three halloumi pieces were grilled nicely and had nice flavour that started to sing once I added a squeeze of lemon.  Unsurprisingly, the real star of the show for me was the grilled chorizo, which was sweet and crunchy and oozing the paprika fat that signifies great chorizo.  I would have loved some tomato to round out the flavours but I can't complain as I was given the mash up in the first place.

I felt quite comfortable eating at Pablo, the staff were pretty down to earth and at the end of the day provided some great service.  Our waiter went out of his way to make sure I could get my mash up of ingredients from some of the other dishes.  

There is a coziness in Pablo that was quite refreshing which probably had a lot to do with the size of the place and the proximity to the kitchen and staff.  There actually seemed to be a lot of staff working in such a compact little space, at some times there seemed to be more staff than customers.  As usual we arrived at the right time, shortly after we ordered every seat in the place was taken so getting to New Farm breakfast joints early is a must.

I was pretty stuffed after my breakfast and I think the halloumi was the main culprit but I finally felt like I'd vanquished the hunger pangs that I had been feeling ever since I completed my first day's fast.  This was good as it was fast day again the next day, a day in which I would be typing up this very post.....  mmmm, I'm hungry, bring on tomorrow.

@FoodMeUpScotty

This was the coolest water bottle ever...

Quite a broad range of people eating at Pablo

Words to live by

I would have had this dish too if I couldn't get my mash up

Really yellow eggs

I loved the wall mural

A tiny little spot with lots of goodies to take away

This place looks small, right?  There are more seats inside