Morning shots in Melbourne

What we've been getting in the mornings. Shots of beetroot, carrot and pineapple. Thanks Crystal!

Hector's Deli, Little Collin's Street, Melbourne CBD

Breakfast at Hector's Deli (61 Little Collins Street, Melbourne). I hear that these guys are known for their sandwiches so we got a couple.

This was the beef and pickles. The menu described it with "beef pastrami, American cheese, hectic sauce, mustard pickle spread, dill pickles and kraut on light rye". Pretty pickle-y and sour which was the dominant flavour that overwhelmed the slices of pastrami in it. Bread was very crunchy. Not for people with weak teeth.

Their mushroom melt was equally crunchy and also pretty sour. That sour came from the mustard pickle spread. Personally, I thought the mushrooms were sidelined.

Okay-ish matcha.

The sandwiches were pretty hefty so we had to doggie bag half of them. 

The next day......

Here's that beef and pickle again the next day. It tasted noticeably better with extra butter and maple syrup.

Pie Face, Cranbourne North, Melbourne

We were in the vicinity and saw Pie Face (1585 Thompsons Road, Cranbourne North, Melbourne). Bought one of their beef and cheese pies to try. These guys were once upon a time darlings of the pie brands here from what I gathered. There has been some criticism over the quality of their pies in the past years but we didn't know any better because this was our first time getting one.

Quite buttery crust and and chunkier meat than the beef pie from Country Cob Bakery. Didn't taste bad.

Village Hoppers, Cranbourne North, Melbourne

The winds of fate wove our paths to Village Hoppers (Shop 3/1655 Thompsons Road, Cranbourne North, Melbourne, tel : +61 3 9702 0928) which has Indian and Sri Lankan food in this locale. 

We were introduced to their spicy bonda & lamb rolls.

Those spicy bonda were filled with potatoes underneath their shells of fried bread. They were hefty starch on starch balls that lived up to their names by being packed with respectable heat. Nice.

Pretty good tasting lamb fried rice. I'm not sure if the intention was for those lamb bits to taste like lamb jerky though.

That's rice with a pretty yummy dal and a kale gotu kola sambol. The latter wasn't as flavour packed as the pennywort rendition from Rasa Raja Bojun. Not bad as a whole though.

Chicken briyani was also savoury and flavourful from their concoction of masala. Bird's pretty tender. No qualms coming back for these.

Country Cob Bakery, Springvale, Melbourne

One of the things we've been looking forward to this trip was pies. After some "research", I had to concede that the options were overwhelming. Country Cob Bakery (890-892 Princes Highway, Springvale, Melbourne) looked like a good shop as any for a newbie because...... 

......it's home of Australia's best pie? 😂 Even the options here was overwhelming.

We settled on a few. They all looked mostly the same on the outside with that buttery brown pastry shell.

Curry scallop pie's not bad. The curry appeared to have a lot of green peas in them and was a little coconut-y. Not as much scallops in it as I thought but I'm not complaining.

The Malaysian prawn pie tasted like an creamy and less spicy version of laksa. Most people back home will never identify this as laksa. It tasted like laksa rempah. Just not exactly laksa. And no laksa leaves. Not bad. Chunky prawns in there.

My favourite was their plain beef pie which had a intensely flavoured, creamy and velvety filling of beef gravy. There's small bits of beef in that delicious gravy and I liked it. 👍🏼

Vanilla slice - or what I also discovered was named "snot block". Our first snot block. The layer inside between the pastry tasted custardy like how I imagined it.

Lune Croissanterie, Fitzroy, Melbourne

Came across Lune Croissanterie and their hype engine which included the founder Kate Reid, a former Formula One aerodynamicist who pivoted to baking and now uses her background to bring technical precision to the world of pastry.

From what we gathered, every croissant takes three days to make through meticulous dough-folding, resting, and temperature control inside a futuristic glass cube kitchen. 

You already know you're never ever going to discern all of that effort in the pastry.

We skipped the shop in the CBD under advisement and visited the larger shop at Fitzroy (19 Rose Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne).

Sparkling water is....free. As much as you want. 😬

That's the "Almond" - frangipane filled with a ridge of toasted almond slices. It's okay-ish. I prefer the rendition of croissant aux amandes from The Stamford Brasserie which I thought was more expressive with the frangipane. 

Kouign amann also okay. Buttery, sweet and almost like a croissant. I don't understand their intricacies enough to comment further but I do feel that the bak kwa version from Tiong Bahru Bakery has more character in its flavour. I am aware it's not a fair comparison.

Their morning bun's like another croissant with sugar and cinnamon. Not bad.

Coffee's pretty decent. Aromatic and adequately intensity from the roast.

We packed a croissant back to try because these were apparently the thing that Lune is known for. It's okay. Pretty sure I didn't taste all the engineering that went into it.

That being said, I didn't dislike anything we had from Lune. I wouldn't mind coming back for more pastries if I didn't have to wait in line for it.