Lady Lunchalot

O and I have found Yarraville’s best breakfast cafe. Strangely enough, it’s at the place I have been avoiding since moving here - The Cut Paw Paw Cafe in Anderson St. It always looked so empty and forlorn every time I walked by it that I never felt compelled to step inside (I’m always a little suspicious of places that look like they struggle to attract a clientele), but O and I decided to give it a go on Saturday morning and we were pleasantly surprised.

The menu is big on hollandaise sauce, which is never a favourite of mine. To me, hollandaise is one of the most sinful foods you can eat. And not in that deliciously wicked chocolate mud cake kind of a way. It just makes me think of heart attacks, which is not exactly what you want to be contemplating over your Eggs Benedict.

I had the poached eggs with Bubble and Squeak (sans Hollandaise), and O ordered the bacon and eggs. I have got to tell you, this chef REALLY knows how to poach an egg.

A decent example of a poached egg is one of the hardest foods to find. It seems that Melbourne has a dire shortage of chefs who can poach an egg properly. Most poached eggs I come across are either little rubbery balls that would bounce back onto your plate if you dropped them on the floor, or soggy vinegary splodges that soak the toast beneath them, generally ruining a perfectly good slice of sourdough.

So on the whole, I never fail to be disappointed by poached eggs. Until my eggs arrived at the Cut Paw Paw Cafe.

This was the most masterful display of egg poaching I have come across since the last time O cooked me breakfast. (O took to perfecting the art of egg poaching with an almost religious zeal when we first met). The eggs at the Cut Paw Paw were two perfect eggy globes sitting atop a block of Bubble and Squeak which, unfortunately, was nowhere near as good as the eggs.

They had been cooked for the perfect length of time - long enough that if you wiggle the plate they still wobble like a woman’s breast (without implants) - and had been drained to ensure that no sogginess from the cooking liquid seeped onto the other items on the plate. I knicked the top of the egg with my knife and a small frown of runny yolk oozed out, as though my egg was poking its tongue at me. The best part was that there was not a trace of vinegar souring the egg white, which many chefs use to prevent the white from straying too far from the yolk.

And as if my perfectly poached eggs weren’t enough, O’s bacon was sublime. Not too crispy, not too soggy - just bacon cooked to salty heart-stopping perfection. I think I’ve found my new brekkie haunt.