Cellar Bar
| Where | 80 Bourke St, Melbourne, 3000—View map |
Contact | 03 9662 1811 enquiries@grossiflorentino.com |
Website | www.grossiflorentino.com |
Open | Monday to Saturday 07.30am to 12.00pm |
Payment | EFTPOS, Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Cash |
Diet | Check with venue |
Seating | Inside and outside |
Kids | Get a baby sitter |
Pets | Welcome |
Grossi Florentino does breakfast!
Jan van Schaik
You wouldn't think so, but they serve breakfast at Florentino's Cellar bar, Well at least I didn't think so. I'm not sure exactly why it's never crossed my mind, but there's just something about the "ye old bistro" style furnishings and Italianer-than-thou waiters that seems to curdle with breakfast.
So I ended up there in error, just sort of strolled up the street and found myself slumped in a street side wicker chair. Feeling the motivation to eat often called hunger and realising the chair was serviced by a culinary premises of some repute I optimistically inquired after breakfast.
Now the usual reason for strange and absent-minded behaviour on a weekend morning is withdrawal and dehydration brought on by the previous evening's week's-end emotional purge, but no such luck this Saturday. I'll have to put it down to a life not lived or my unhappy childhood or my inner creche - take your pick, I always do.
Unsure what to order from such an un-breakfast menu I suggested they prepare my regular Saturday grazing: poached eggs tomatoes spinach and a little toast hiding beneath, it's one of the constants I cling to.
When my plate arrived something seemed not quite right. I don't mean the food, but the presentation, beautiful though it was. A fine shallow plate, cutlery delicately placed on the intimate table. A thick napkin covertly draped over my lap. What was wrong? The problem was with the layout.
This was not the endless extent of my usual breakfast space, with acres of room for condiments, three coffees and two weekend newspapers. This was no place for me to hide and pretend that in wearing sunglasses none can see me. And what with the late morning sun bouncing off the porcelain white of the porcelain and the linen white of the linen and how quick to quip the well-dressed and definitely not part-time employed waiter was, this was all feeling very very unlike breakfast to me.
By now you're wondering just what here exactly is worth writing home about, because I only write if I'm writing home (that was for you mum).
Then the tomatoes arrived. The tomatoes. They were in this little dish of their own. They'd been baked. In that very dish. Only just baked though, like a baking version of blanching. With their still tight skins clinging to their perfect green branches giving of that verdant aroma that just-picked tomatoes do. These had come from someone's mother's garden (sorry mum, not you this time), and my pupils did dilate as the seeds burst from their membrane with infinite sweetness onto my surprised palate. That was just the first one, and there were five more of the little critters, cherry tomatoes I believe you call them. A type of tomato one's not supposed to find at breakfast, but by now I'm way beyond that whole breakfast/lunch thing. One of the tomatoes I'm saving to squash over my butter and toast, and one I'm going to wrap in bacon pigs-in-a-blanket style but not the last one. No, the last one...... the last one is for you.
Nope, sorry, can't do it. Gone. I loved that one so much I was trying to mind morph every cell in my body into a taste bud as I tried to eat it both slowly and quickly at the same time.
So if you can't eat the home-grown tomatoes that you know you should, then find your way to a Florentino's Cellar bar breakfast, believe it or not.
p.s. while you're there try the coffee, you'll only need one.