Friends of Ours

When one of my friends tells me they have tried an absolutely incredible new meal, I must go; beit days or weeks, I have mentally popped it on my list and I will shimmy the meal into my social plans when next appropriate. Now I’m a ‘blogger’ and social media is a big part of my life, I gaze at what other people are eating, and I have this new source of recommendations. Do you trust social media recommendations? Because there is no one to blame when you don’t enjoy the meal, a lot of the time is all down to personal taste. Now when I scroll through Instagram, I see a beautiful meal and I think, I have to try that. Does an image of a beautiful meal with sunlight falling onto it tell you that the flavours are perfectly balanced? For professional food journalists and chefs the rise of Instagram must be incredibly frustrating, the latter potentially being distrusted when writing reviews without images and the former possibly trying to increase the ‘instagramability’ of dishes for marketing purposes.

We are in a time now where the phase, ‘eating with our eyes’ becomes ever more pertinent.  Needless to say after seeing images of Friends of Ours brunch options, I had to go..

I roped in a few people, it wasn’t hard when I showed them various table shots, just like mine above. Friends of Ours is an independent café serving brunch and coffee.

We start with a coffee, furthermore a specialty coffee as they have Dark Arts beans, also well made, a tick from me. The brunch menu is made up of healthy perky sounding brunch dishes, but with a few quirky ingredients, to make things a little more Instagramable..

Huevos Motolenos – Chipotle, tomato and capsicum sauce, chorizo, garden peas, smoked ham, fried plantain, spring onions, fried egg, baby coriander, on arepa bread + avocado.

Eggs Royal – in house lime cured & green tea smoked salmon, beetroot & lime hollandaise, 2 poached eggs, black sesame, beetroot sprouts on seeded toast.

Harissa eggs- harrissa & tomato sauce, fried egg, hummus, kasundi, feta, mint & labneh.

Eggs asparagus – Seasonal baby asparagus, 2 poached eggs, beetroot & lime hollandaise, black sesame, beetroot sprouts on seeded toast.

Mine was the one above, and just in case you were wondering how those eggs were cooked…Pretty damn well, brunch overall was wonderful, the flavours live up to the menu descriptions and the ingredients tasted fresh. If I had to fault anything the toast was a little dense, but that is me being fussy.

And of course, I have eyed up a ‘special’, which just happened to be a dessert…

Pistachio & vanilla cake with coffee mascapone and dark chocolate shards

Possibly my favourite part of the meal, the sponge was soft and moist with bitter dark chocolate, and latte-like coffee mascapone, wonderful.

Friends of Ours haven’t gone to all of that effort, just to make the plate look pretty, it goes hand in hand with bright colourful flavour.

http://www.friendsofourscafe.com/