Dead Man Espresso, Campfires and unconventional BLTs

So.. hi :D

I know I've been gone for a while. I've had a few things to settle, and I also had a couple of guests visit me as well. But now that everything's back on track, and life's back to normal, I'm back to blogging.

Dead Man Espresso
35 Market Street, South Melbourne VIC
03 9686 2255
http://www.deadmanespresso.com.au/
Mon - Thurs, 7am - 4pm, Sat - Sun, 8am - 4pm.
[ tram 112, stop 127 (York St/Clarendon St) ]

 It's a short walk away from the tram stop, but it's also a very short walk away from the market. There weren't any cafés along the adjacent street if i can recall correctly; the only thing i remember was the garage-converted-into-a-crossfit-gym along Clarke St. 

You know you've reached when you see a building that looks like it's made out of crate planks and when you hear the typical buzz of a café. I was really surprised that the place wasn't as busy as a café would be on a Saturday morning, given that Dead Man has quite a good reputation. I'm not complaining though.

Ordered the usual strong latté and soy latté. I've forgotten how much the coffee is over there; usually i take a photo of their menu but even their menu didn't have the price. Oh well, it can't be far from the $3.50-$4.30 price range. Blend was by Seven Seeds, which is one of my favourites.

Dead Man BLT: pork belly and spinach puree on brioche with pickled fennel and apple slaw, $16.50.

Review after review, this was the dish that everyone seemed to order. Maybe because you can never really go too wrong with pork belly. It wasn't really a BLT at all, but it's by far one of my favourite pork belly dishes here in Melbourne.

The brioche was fluffy and the crusts were crunchy - the best kind of bread to have for anything. As usual, what i really liked about the pork belly was the lack of smelly porky taste and smell; the spinach puree cut the fattiness of the pork well too.

I was rather disappointed with their fennel and apple slaw though: there was one full circular slice of green apple sitting in between pickled red cabbage and overly pickled fennel. I almost always finish whatever that's on my plate but i really didn't like the slaw.

Camp fire brekky: bacon, pork and fennel sausage, confit tomatos, Heinz spaghetti, two fried eggs and sourdough, $21.

Yep. This dish was pretty darn big hence the price. Usually I'd turn away from items above $18, but after seeing how much was on that pan, it got my stamp of approval. Jason took one look at it and he said it immediately reminded him of Scouts back in the day, sans the bacon.

I was a little confused about the Heinz spagetti, but maybe that's what campers eat here. Haha. Only thing missing would be baked beans and charcoal and/or ash in the dish. Jason seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed it; it took him ages to finish up cause there was just so much on a plate. 

I've been told that Dead Man Espresso was in the same category as all the other over-rated cafés, but quite honestly, I liked the place. The staff who served us was a little on the blur side, and another staff just kept taking away the plates and cups without asking, but other than that, I enjoyed it.

Food: 8

Coffee: 7

Ambience: 8

Value: 6.5

Staff: 6.5

I will be blogging about my cousin and my sister's trip over the next few days. Don't worry, i've already started. I'm just working out how to piece two similar trips together into a couple of posts.

On a side note: Things didn't really go the way I planned for uni, and I was a bit of a wreck inside for the last two weeks. But after finally facing it and working things out, I've decided to drop Accounting and take on just Marketing. I was supposed to do an Accounting subject over the summer, but upon dropping the major entirely, I'm doing a breadth (elective) subject on Sports Coaching. How awesome is that?

Can't wait to watch Life of Pi later! Thanks NuffnangAU!

may.