It seems as if I have to travel further and further away from my base in the CBD to check out new and exciting breakfast spots (well, new and exciting for me). We had been through a particularly difficult 'fast day' on Friday and really needed to re-energise for a tilt at the rest of the weekend. I had spent a fair amount of time looking up breakfast spots on the interweb that I hadn't visited before and which seemed interesting. I have to say that looking for breakfast the night of a fast is a really bad idea and all I did was make myself even hungrier.
I'd given up looking on the Friday night and thought that with a good night's sleep, I would have some inspiration and just know where I wanted to head for breakfast. Nope, that didn't work either and it wasn't until SC reminded me that I had my 'list' and there were some breakfast places that I still wanted to visit that it all came together. There were two places left on my list that we needed to visit, both on the south side, so we saddled up and hit the road. First on the list was Lady Marmalade at Stones Corner, which was closed up for the Christmas and New Year break, so we kept on driving.
Our fear that our next destination would also be closed up for the Christmas break was put to rest as we pulled up out the front of Ave' Cucina and it was open for business. Ave' Cucina is a quaint little cafe in the streets of Camp Hill set up by former My Kitchen Rules contestants Veronica and Shadi Abraham. There must be something about the south side and MKR as our initial destination for the morning was also put together by former My Kitchen Rules contestants too. Weird.
It was pretty quiet in the cafe when we arrived, which is pretty usual for our early starts on the weekend and we were able to grab a seat of our choosing. Our waitress handed over a couple of pretty beaten up menus to look over and asked us if we wanted to start off with some coffee. While SC was ordering her usual half strength latte, I was quickly scanning the menu and spotted the smoothies. With a choice of banana, honey and cinnamon or mixed berries, I went with the more familiar berry option, which ended up being silky smooth and full of berry goodness.
The menu at Ave' Cucina, which also means Kitchen in Italian, is not what you would call extensive, in fact it's actually quite small and focussed. There is not a huge range of options but the options on the menu are fairly standard, with the usual suspects appearing. This type of short and sweet menu is never a problem for me, unless there are no eggs or bacon on the menu, in which case I have a huge problem. Luckily my simple preferences were catered for and I was able to order the 'messy eggs', which were dairy free scrambled eggs with a side of herbed mushrooms, grilled tomato and of course some sweet sweet bacon.
When my plate was delivered, the first thing I noticed about my food was the interesting colours and presentation of the scrambled eggs, which had a mix of the normal yellow of scrambled eggs and the white of fried eggs. The next thing I noticed was the empty plate, something was missing.... My mushrooms. A quick word with the staff at the counter soon had this sorted out and a big plate of sautéed mushrooms appeared. And what mushrooms they were, perfectly seasoned with a beautiful flavour that was really lovely, they were so great I think they would be pushing for the best mushrooms I'd had all year. While the messy eggs looked a little unusual, they were really delicious, also seasoned perfectly and had a delicious yolky flavour that I really enjoyed. The tastiness continued with the bacon, which was cooked just to my liking and had a lovely salty yet sweet flavour that left me wanting more. In fact, the only element on the plate that wasn't perfect were the tomatoes, which for some reason tasted a bit bland, especially since everything else was so well seasoned.
There were really limited options for SC but she was very happy to order the french toast with orange berry, fresh berries, citrus ricotta, toasted almonds, maple syrup and fairy floss. The dish was a mouthful to say and had a lot going on when presented. The french toast was cooked nicely and had great texture and some amazing flavour with the maple syrup drizzled all over. The combination of the orange and berry was unusual but worked nicely and the toasted almonds gave some good crunch and contrasting texture. After a while though the citrus ricotta got a little overwhelming, with the bulk of it ending up set aside and ended up being the only thing left on the plate by the time SC had finished.
I have to say I was a little surprised with how great the breakfast was and one of the great things about going further afield for breakfast is to come across little gems like Ave' Cucina. It remained pretty quiet for the duration of our visit, which I think was more of a factor of the time of year than the quality of the food. Like some suburban cafes I've been to, it was not the most interesting of layouts but it was quite functional.
The staff on hand for the day were really friendly and quite helpful. Sure, there was the minor error of missing out one of my key ingredients, but they were very quick to rectify the error and were extremely apologetic. It's definitely OK for restaurants and cafes to make mistakes, crikey I make enough myself, as long as they are quick to fix and apologise, which was the case here.
It's been a long year for me searching out the best breakfast in Brisbane with some highs and some lows but I would sure say that the breakfast at Ave' Cucina sits in the 'highs' category. There were even a couple of elements that would compete for my favourite of the year, with the eggs and mushrooms being really, really great. I'm not sure what treats 2014 will bring me for great breakfasts but I know that I'm going to head back to Ave' Cucina again at some point, those mushrooms were too good not to have again.
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| A lovely little arrangement with flowers on the table |
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| It's quite bland and boring inside but I guess the seats are bright red. That counts right? |
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| The bright red seats! It was pretty quiet for our visit |
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| Ave' |
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| This reminded me of a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory. The perspective is very weird |
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| Old style cookie containers |
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