Big Brekky, 12 Sept 2009

It would only be fitting that the first food post to appear here be about my favourite meal of the day: brunch. By no means a standard meal of each day, but rather that lovely melding of breakfast and lunch which is sometimes enjoyed into the afternoon on weekends or when on holidays. My earliest memories of brunch involve fried eggs, bacon and toast, served with tomato sauce on the side, made by Mum on a day off work. This practice was done away with when McDonald’s added a breakfast menu (showing my age here), and we could often be found at one of their “family restaurants” on a Sunday morning. Oh, ‘twas the height of my young and unrefined palate!

I have my biases when it comes to dining out for brunch. I will choose something of the cooked and of the savoury varieties. Unfortunately fruit salad, muesli, yoghurt or even pancakes fail to evoke the sort of food-lust produced by eggs cooked in any fashion paired with bread and, usually, some sort of salty meat. This is partly due to my love of poached eggs in recent years, and the fact that I fail to reproduce these silken parcels whilst cooking myself. Also for me, the bigger the sleep-in, the larger the craving for savoury foods, which brings me to brunch amplified – the all-day breakfast.

Being in the Leichardt/Petersham area last Saturday around lunchtime, Monsieur Poisson and myself wondered where to feed ourselves when we remembered we had a copy of Simon Thomsen’s “Breakfast specials” article from July (I am oft found with a dining “hit list” on me). Browsing down the list, we find that Big Brekky is just a few streets away so we decide to head there. Parking is easy to find on Albert Street and we bump into Monsieur Poisson’s work colleague upon getting out of the car. It happens that he had just finished eating at Big Brekky and recommends us the eggs benedict.

We are seated at a table by the window facing Stanmore Road and are given menus which, to my delight, are comprised of about 80% breakfast items to 20% lunch items. We are also brought a bottle of water which is always a nice touch – I love eateries that bring water to the table, without you asking, as part of their standard practice. Big Brekky serves Campos coffee which I find has a more full-bodied flavour than some which are commonly served in cafés around Sydney.

We order a skim flat-white, an orange and pineapple juice, a ‘Florentine’ and ‘The Big Brekky’ with poached eggs. The specials board features pea, haloumi and mint fritters which catch my fancy but we decide to stick with standard menu fare being our first visit here. The flat-white is spot-on, if a little small, and is more than compensated for in size by the mixed juice.

The ‘Florentine’ features an inch-thick slice of toasted brioche (sweet, soft and bun-like as it should be) topped with two beautifully poached eggs (untainted by any vinegar taste, commonly added to the poaching water to help the eggwhites set and hold), well-drained spinach (nothing worse than fluid pooling and making other things soggy or diluting sauces) and a mildly tart hollandaise. The flavour of the hollandaise is nicely contrasted by the sweetness of the brioche and the fats contained help gloss the spinach. The brioche itself is a nice variation on the usual English muffin. I pierce the yolk of one of the poached eggs and am met with golden yolk bursting lava-like. Food-wise, there’s nothing much I find sexier than a well-poached egg.

‘The Big Brekky’ comes heaped on a round plate with two rashers of (slightly greasy) bacon and a pork and sage sausage hidden under a mound of garlic button mushrooms and roasted baby Roma tomatoes. The potato hash is not one of the frozen variety (thank goodness!) and is mildly spicy – care of cumin, perhaps? (Not au fait with spices at all, I’m afraid.) 'The Big Brekky' is very generous in its serving size.

Monsieur Poisson orders a café latté which arrives decorated with what appears to be a tulip contained within a heart – very cute! I’m too full for any further drinks but I notice that one of the patrons on the table next to us has ordered tea which arrives in a white, Chinese-style teapot with milk in a mini glass bottle all served on a small bamboo platter.

Our conversation was sometimes interrupted by the passing aeroplanes, otherwise there was very little traffic noise. When Monsieur Poisson finished his coffee, we headed off into an unusually warm September afternoon in Sydney.

Big Brekky

316 Stanmore Rd (cnr Albert St), Petersham NSW

Tel: (02) 9569 8588

Opening Hours:  Mon-Sat  7am-3pm

happy eating! 

So, where are your favourite breakfast/brunch joints and why? Please share so that I can eat there as well...