December 13, 2009: Gigi's of Beechworth

Update 18/06/2023: Gigi's is now closed.

We only had a short time in Beechworth post-Provenance to explore (long enough for bird #263, a white-winged chough) and the first order of business was some sustenance to get us through the day ahead. For a food-tastic country town, Beechworth wasn't overflowing with breakfast options on a Sunday morning - we'd been warned off the bakery (pictured above) and there wasn't a great deal else on offer.

Gigi's looked promising, with a reasonably varied menu and enough veg options to get our hopes up. Not to mention the Age Good Food Guide sticker on the door - sure sign that this place knew what it was doing. Unfortunately, they didn't - the service, while friendly enough, was all over the place - it took too long to get menus and even longer to have our orders taken, but the biggest problem of all was the coffee. Usually you order a coffee, it comes out before your brekkie and you're ready for another by the time you've finished eating. It seems as though Gigi's was trying to cut our caffeine intake by limiting us to the post-meal coffee - we didn't see a hot drink until after everyone had finished eating. Pretty poor form. And even then the coffee wasn't outstanding.

The food was reasonable without being particularly thrilling. I ordered the home-made baked beans on sourdough with poached eggs and spinach ($15).

The eggs were excellent, as was the bread, while the beans were a little too firm for my taste and lacking a bit in the spices that I'm looking for in breakfast beans. At $15, these fell a fair way short of the cheaper Mixed Business variety.

Cindy went sweet again, with a warm house-baked fruit brioche served with cinnamon butter ($8.50).

I'm not sure what qualified this as 'brioche', but semantics aside, Cindy was pretty happy with her meal - mostly because they used such a heavy hand on the cinnamon butter.

It's hard for me to be too generous about Gigi's - if you're going to position yourself as the fancy breakfast place in town, you really need to get fundamentals like coffee sorted out. Maybe Provenance should muscle into the breakfast market.

Address: 69 Ford Street, Beechworth
Ph: 5728 2575
Licensed
Prices: Vegie breakfasts, $6-$15
Website: http://gigisofbeechworth.com