Babka has an excellent reputation but we rarely make it there for breakfast. It's understandably popular, it can be difficult to secure a table and there are other excellent options closer to our home. On the morning of Christmas Eve, however, we waltzed through to a table for two while others queued out the door for takeaway goods!
We both ended up choosing brunches from the specials board. The zucchini, mint and fetta fritters with mild(ish) chilli and apple jam and avocado ($12.80) sounded like my kind of savoury breakfast. While it was good, it wasn't everything I'd hoped for - the toast was unexpected, the avocado was a tiny portion, the chilli jam tasted great but was just barely jammy, and the zucchini fritters weren't cooked. Well browned on the outside, the crust gave way to a interior that was all batter and no fritter. Nothing tasted bad, though, and I cleared my plate.
Michael completed the breakfast switch by ordering the sweet special, ricotta hotcakes with strawberries and home grown honey and pistachios ($12.80). These had the right texture - cooked through, light and fluffy. While they were all that was promised, they weren't a patch on the blintzes that feature on Babka's regular menu.
Babka's latest specials weren't quite as special as we'd hoped, though we acknowledge that the kitchen was probably under a lot of pressure in these last shopping hours before Christmas. The staff were supremely accommodating in the circumstances - prompt, attentive and even cheery.
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You can read about our first Babka breakfast here. Since then, this bakery has been blogged at MEL: HOT OR NOT, Greg's brunch wrap, Kong-Kay1, Food Rehab, finding my way around..., Melbourne Dining Experiences, markpj, Happiness is a warm gut, Eat And Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Die(t), From Our Kitchen and Melbourne Culinary Journal.
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