Kojo Brown – Richmond

This morning’s breakfast was a bit of a disappointment. Kojo Brown is a sometimes-regular cafe for these monsters, and we’re usually pretty happy with the food served, which is why it’s a semi-regular haunt. But today’s breakfast was sub-par. Which is ironic since today was the day we went there to review it.

The littler monster perused the menu (which had a few veggie options, to their credit, including a vegetarian breakfast chock full of items) and decided on the Mushrooms on Toast with poached eggs option, which is a number of types of mushrooms including shitake and enoki. Since I’m such a mushroom freak, I was looking forward to this.

Coffee with soy, while waiting for the food, was a little disappointing, a bit bitter but still drinkable.

When the breakfast arrived, it was a little surprising. The enoki was over-fried so much so that it looked like fried crispy onion. The other mushrooms were also a little over fried, making them tough and chewy. The poached eggs were not the best either, the whites were a little undercooked while the yolks were in parts bordering on solid. Not sure how they managed that, but it’s a trick I’ve never seen in any other cafe. The toast was thick and tasty but I don’t think it was buttered. I would have loved to been a fly on the wall at the meeting where all the cafes in Melbourne got together and decided they were all going to stop buttering toast. Plus, I wonder what the catering would have been like at that meeting.

The bigger monster didn’t mind his breakfast, though he will say it looked a lot more flavoursom than it tasted… which is a problem for flavour really.  Mushrooms, scramble on toast, hashbrowns and a tomato relish.  Mushrooms looked like they were balsamic’d but it was clearly  a cunning ploy as they were a bit cardboardy.  The eggs needed a but of salt added to them cause other wise they just tasted like egg and i didn’t fancy my toast either.  Turned very breaddy by the end.  The relish was lacking in the sticky vinegary good of good relish, mostly seemed like tomato and onion sauce on the side, and watery sauce at that, and the hash browns were storebought and too hot.

Hahaha, I’m so complainy.  It wasn’t any where as bad as it sounds, it was pretty edible and I finished it, just… I dunno, I wanted something better.  Somethign with a bit of flair.  Sour cream in the eggs and garlic on the mushrooms or something, I dunno.  BLAH.

Coffee was okay and the waitress had to ask us how to spell relish, which I thought was a bit cute.  She was struggling with English as a second language, not uneducated and she went bright red after asking… awww, foreigners, so adorable.

All in all, not a great breakfast, but since they’re usually better than this, we’re gunna be a little generous with the points. Of course, if this is a downward trend rather than an accidental blip, we’ll let you know.

3 out of 5