Sunday, August 15, 2010

August 10. 2010: Gertrude Street Grub - Arcadia II

Arcadia has been a semi-regular lunch-time haunt of mine on the rare occasions I can't muster up the energy to walk up to Trippytaco. It's been a while since I blogged it - my first visit left me fairly disappointed, but I've eaten much better meals there since then.

So when work buddies set up a pre-work-day breakfast plan, I thought I should take the camera along and give Arcadia a second blog-showing. The breakfast menu has a few non-standard options: Mexican-themed egg dishes, delicious pancakes, spicy jalapeno loaf and so forth. There aren't too many options that are vegetarian by default, but they're happy to mix things around for you. I decided to sample the pan-fried mash potato cake with spinach, pesto and mayo, with the standard bacon swapped out for some delicious fried mushrooms ($18.50).

This was a pretty great feast - amazing pesto, perfectly poached eggs, a giant wodge of fried spud. What's not to like? The price is the main downside - $18.50 is an awful lot of money to spend on breakfast. For almost $20, I'm going to want a dusting of diamonds, or at least a truffle or two.

Arcadia is expensive across the board, but they do churn out some excellent meals, and the staff are helpful and friendly. Case in point: they were happy to throw together a vegan brekkie for a colleague: spicy beans, spinach, avo, mushrooms and toast. Not too shabby.

Arcadia's well worth a visit if you're loaded up with cash - great coffee, nice space, excellent staff and a good range of options both breakfast and lunch. I guess you're just going to have to wear the Gertrude Street prices.

Read about my last visit to Arcadia here. Or check out loads of other reviews: Craft City Melbourne, Breakies Worth Getting Up For, Beautiful Inspirations, Slicing Almonds and Zesting Lemons, A Breakie in Melbourne, Fitzroyalty and Fat Feminist Foodie.

4 comments:

  1. I can vouch for the tastiness of the made-up vegan breaky. Twas lovely to start my last day at work with such a feast!

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  2. That vegan breakfast looks good - I don't think I have ever had breakfast there but have had quite a few lunches at arcadia - also love the big chunky savoury muffins. Wish I had had your brekky rather than the one I had yesterday - love potato pancakes

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  3. The staff were friendly and helpful?? Amazing. I've been living artound the corner from Arcadia for 4 years, and in that time have never walked out of Arcadia without feeling at best tolerated and at worst insulted.
    So six months ago I made the decision to always muster the energy to walk further down the steet. Birdman, Enoteca, Roundhouse Roti and Trippy Taco....all lovely pleaces with lovely staff...unlike Arcadia.

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  4. Anon - it could be that we were early and things were quiet, but the staff were really helpful and happy for us to mess with the standard menu items. Maybe they get grumpy when the lunch crowd hits?

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