Demie's All-Day 20th Celebration: Brunch at Café Sweethearts

First of all, happy birthday to my closest girlfriend in Melbourne, Demie! I probably spent a good 2 weeks stressing out about planning your birthday, and as bad as this may sound, I'm glad the weight's finally off!

She picked South Melbourne for brunch, so we headed to Café Sweethearts as opposed to the usual hotspots like Chez Dré and St. Ali etc.

Café Sweethearts

263 Coventry St, South Melbourne VIC
03 9690 6752
https://www.facebook.com/cafesweethearts
[ tram 96, stop 127 (South Melbourne Market) ]
Mon - Fri, 7am - 3pm, Sat - Sun, 8am - 3pm

It's just a very short walk from the market, I nearly walked past it if Demie didn't point it out. There were about 2 staff members who greeted and seated us, and the café had only one other customer in store. The place started to fill up as we were halfway through our meal though.

It was a very simply, but very prettily decorated place. Very pretty, very nice lighting, light music. Probably a very good place to have a date, which goes hand-in-hand with the name of the café.

Their counter was small, with a small coffee machine and a few muffin displays. The staff members let us do our own thing most of the time, they didn't really say much aside from taking our order and when I paid the bill.

Banana coconut and honey and apple rhubarb and strawberry for the day. Sounds good eh? Too bad i didn't grab one.

It might be obvious to many people that the focus of the café is eggs, eggs, and eggs. 1.5 pages in the menu, all dedicated to eggs - poached, scrambled, or fried.

Orange Juice and Apple Juice, $4.40 each.

I was having a headache, so I decided against the usual soy latté. It's probably from the stall from the market down the road, but that definitely gave me a good kick and my daily dose of vitC.

Complimentary bread to start off with. The herbed bread was pretty good.

Pasta: Linguini with samali, chorizo, ham, chilli and Napoli sauce, $18.50 (entree size).

Demie's pasta looked very much like a carbonara, but it was really light. From what I saw, there was plenty of meat as well. Only thing was, linguini, which was what it was supposed to be, would've definitely suited the sauce better than penne.

Roti wrap with roasted pumpkin, eggplant and capsicum, spinach and Persian feta, $12.50.

I actually liked this quite a fair bit. Instead of the usual tortilla wraps, they've used roti which gave it another depth of flavour.

You can never go wrong with roasted pumpkin, eggplant and capsicum. The veggies were relatively sweet, so the feta complimented it well.

Overall, the pasta was alright, but I liked the wrap. I might go back, not because the food we had was mind-blowing, but to try out their eggs! Why didn't we order their obvious specialty, I have no idea, but the tables all around did and it looked really good. And maybe I'll try out their coffee the next time round too.

Food: 7

Coffee: N/A

Ambience: 8

Value: 7

Staff: 6.5

Naw, if only you weren't holding that horrible bag!

read the next post for Demie's bday high tea!
may.